Quotes About Discovery

Imagine truth as a chain of great mountains, their tops way up in the clouds. Writers explore these truths, always looking out for new paths up these peaks.

They have no idea if the paintings have faded away, or have been spray-painted with graffiti, or if the bunker still exists – or, for that matter, if it ever existed at all – but they are young and the trail is wide and Easily traveled. And even if they don't find what they're looking for, isn't it enough to be out walking together in the sunlight?

Over the years, I've learned that the first idea you have is irrelevant. It's just a catalyst for you to get started. Then you figure out what's wrong with it and you go through phases of denial, panic, regret. And then you finally have a better idea and the second idea is always the important one.

I love you, Allison. It happened when I wasn't looking for it, when I didn't know I needed it. But I fell in love with you so quickly and so smoothly. So without question.

So I have spent four years without touch and affection and without wanting any. But now there is Christopher Shepherd, the boy who changed all the rules.

Matt raised an eyebrow. "Tour the Greek cathedral, huh? We can call it that, if you want. Sure.

Platypus? I thought it was pronounced platymapus. Has it always been pronounced platypus?

Reading in another language implies a perpetual state of growth, of possibility. I

My grandfather always says that's what books are for. To travel without moving an inch.

I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.

I had never traveled alone before and I discovered that I liked it. No one in the world knew where I was, no one had the ability to reach me. It was like being dead, my escape allowing me to taste that tremendous power my mother possessed forever.

Writing down call numbers with short pencils, searching up and down aisles that would turn dark when the timers on the lights expired. She recalls, visually, certain passages in the books she'd read. Which side of the book, where on the page.

Lying in his parents' house, in the middle of the night, she told him the whole story, about meeting Dimitri on a bus, finding his resume in the bin. She confessed that Dimitri had gone with her to Palm Beach. One by one he stored the pieces of information in his mind, unwelcome, unforgivable. And for the first time in his life, another man's name upset Gogol more than his own.

Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth. —NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, "The Custom-House

The unknown words remind me that there's a lot I don't know in this world.

He regretted only one thing: that he had not met her sooner, that he had not known her every day of his life.

Whenever I can, in my study, on the subway, in bed before going to sleep, I immerse myself in Italian. I enter another land, unexplored, murky.

When you're in love, you want to live forever. You want the emotion, the excitement you feel to last. Reading in Italian arouses a similar longing in me. I don't want to die, because my death would mean the end of my discovery of the language. Because every day there will be a new word to learn. Thus true love can represent eternity.

That's what books are for, to travel without moving an inch.

Le parole sconosciute mi ricordano che c'è tanto che non conosco in questo mondo.

Le parole sconosciute rappresentano un abisso vertiginoso, fecondo. Un abisso che contiene tutto ciò che mi sfugge, tutto il possibile.

he wanted to relive those confused days, that life of discovery, to be bound to those round tables and lectures and exams. There were things he had always meant to understand better [...] He wanted to read what he was told each evening, to do as he was told. There were great writers he had never read, would never read. His daughters would begin that journey soon enough, the world opening up for them in its entirety.

My grandfather always says that's what books are for," Ashoke said, using the opportunity to open the volume in his hands. "To travel without moving an inch.

had never traveled alone before and I discovered that I liked it. No one in the world knew where I was, no one had the ability to reach me. It was like being dead, my escape allowing me to taste that tremendous power my mother possessed forever.