His mistake was that he traded gods, science for Allah, and hence, traded goals without knowing it. He is as much a manufactured product of his relig… - Arthur C. Clarke

Here and there, set into the somber red, were rivers of bright yellow — incandescent Amazons, meandering for thousands of miles before they lost themselves in the deserts of this dying sun. Dying? No — that was a wholly false impression, born of human experience and the emotions aroused by the hues of sunset, or the glow of fading embers. This was a star that had left behind the fiery extravagances of its youth, had raced through the violets and blues and greens of the spectrum in a few fleeting billions of years, and now had settled down to a peaceful maturity of unimaginable length. All that had gone before was not a thousandth of what was yet to come; the story of this star had barely begun.

Yet it was the impression that the unknown master has set out to create, Phoenix-like, from the dying embers of a great legend. He had captured, and held for all future ages to see, that beauty whose service is the purpose of life, and it sole justification.

Now times had changed, and the inherited wisdom of the past had become folly.