Quotes About Discovery

But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever have been thy failures hitherto, "be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?

Když do sebe se zhloubi zahledíÅ¡, bezpo?et krajin uvidíÅ¡ – le? neobjevených. Nu, projdi je a sta? se znalcem vlastní kosmografie!

be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

I found my account in climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine, on the top of a hill; and though I got well pitched, I was well paid for it, for I discovered new mountains in the horizon which I had never seen before—so much more of the earth and the heavens. I might have walked about the foot of the tree for threescore years and ten, and yet I certainly should never have seen them.

Mi región ofrece gran número de paseos espléndidos; y aunque durante muchos años he caminado prácticamente cada día, y a veces durante varios días, aún no los he agotado. Un panorama completamente nuevo me hace muy feliz, y sigo encontrando uno cada tarde. Dos o tres horas de camino me llevan a una zona tan desconocida como siempre espero. Una granja solitaria que no haya visto antes resulta a veces tan magnífica como los dominios del rey de Dahomey.

We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return—prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms.

The only people who ever get any place interesting are the people who get lost. That's why the planets are so much better company than the stars — they keep wandering back and forth across the sky and you never know where you're going to find them.

In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round—for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost—do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature.

A man is not his hope, nor his despair, nor yet his past deed. We know not yet what we have done, still less what we are doing. Wait till evening, and other parts of our day's work will shine than we had thought at noon, and we shall discover the real purport of our toil. As when the farmer has reached the end of the furrow and looks back, he can tell best where the pressed earth shines most.

If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life. Think of a man's swinging dumbbells for his health, when those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought by him!

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

Henry David Thoreau

The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones.

As this is one of those deep observations which very few readers can be supposed capable of making themselves, I have thought proper to lend them my assistance; but this is a favour rarely to be expected in the course of my work. Indeed, I shall seldom or never so indulge him, unless in such instances as this, where nothing but the inspiration with which we writers are gifted can possibly enable anyone to make the discovery.

he had discovered that his master and himself, like some prudent fathers and sons, though they travelled together in great friendship, had embraced opposite parties.

It has been frequently said that many of the world's greatest inventions were due to accident. In a sense this is true. But the accident was prepared for by previous hard thinking. It would never have occurred had not this thinking taken place.

What men do not know about they take for granted. Knowledge furnishes problems, and the discovery of problems itself constitutes an intellectual advance.

I ought to tell you I'm probably your cousin.

Still, who could say what men ever were looking for? They looked for what they found; they knew what pleased them only when they saw it.

He surveyed the edifice from the outside, and admired it greatly; he looked in at the windows, and received an impression of proportions equally fair. But he felt that he saw it only by glimpses, and that he had not yet stood under the roof. The door was fastened, and although he had keys in his pocket he had a conviction that none of them would fit. She was intelligent and generous; it was a fine free nature, but what was she going to do with herself?

It was as if, at moments, we were perpetually coming into sight of subjects before which we must stop short, turning suddenly out of alleys that we perceived to be blind, closing with a little bang that made us look at each other—for, like all bangs, it was something louder than we had intended—the doors we had indiscreetly opened.

You've got no excuse for being bored anywhere. When I was your age I had never heard of such a thing.

It was all there, in short - it was what he wanted: it was Tremont Street, it was France, it was Lambinet. Moreover, he was freely walking about in it.