Quotes About Discovery

Every reader has found charms by which to secure possession of a page that, by magic, becomes as if never read before, fresh and immaculate.

To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.

Uma biblioteca não é só um lugar de ordem e caos; também é o reino do acaso. mesmo depois de lhes atribuirmos uma prateleira e um número, os livros retêm uma mobilidade própria. Entregues a si mesmos, formam grupos inesperados; seguem regras secretas de semelhança, genealogias que nenhuma crónica regista, interesses e temas comuns.

Libraries, have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I've been seduced by their labyrinthine logic." - The Library at Night

Ordered by subject, by importance, ordered according to whether the book was penned by God or by one of God's creatures, ordered alphabetically or by numbers or by the language in which the text is written, every library translates the chaos of discovery and creation into a structured system of hierarchies or a rampage of free associations.

There is an unbridgeable chasm between the book that traditions had declared a classic and the book (the same book) that we have made ours through instinct, emotion and understanding: suffered through it, rejoiced in it, translated it into our experience and (notwithstanding the layers of readings with which a book come into our hands) essentially become its first discoverers, an experience as astonishing and unexpected.

The discovery of the art of reading is intimate, obscure, secret, almost impossible to explain, akin to falling in love.

At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book - that string of confused, alien ciphers - shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.

Habla el autor] A los cuatro años descubrí que sabía leer. (...) No aprendí a escribir hasta mucho después, cumplidos los siete años. Quizá pudiese vivir sin escribir. No creo que pudiera vivir sin leer. (...)

The discovery of the art of reading is intimate, obscure, secret, almost impossible to explain.

To be enlightened is to be aware, always, of total reality in its immanent otherness - to be aware of it and yet remain in a condition to survive as an animal. Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be. Unhappily we make the task exceedingly difficult for ourselves.

O brave new world that has such people in it.

Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east...

He had discovered Time and Death and God.

Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy.

He held out his right hand in the moonlight. From the cut on his wrist the blood was still oozing. Every few seconds a drop fell, dark, almost colourless in the dead light. Drop, drop, drop. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. . . He had discovered the Time and Death and God.

Everything's incredible, if you can skin off the crust of obviousness our habits put on it. Every object and event contains within itself an infinity of depths within depths.

Do you know what it's like, he asked at length, to feel that nothing is quite real -- including yourself? Susila nodded. It sometimes happens when one's just on the point of discovering that everything, including oneself, is much more real than one ever imagined. It's like shifting gears: you have to go into neutral before you change into high.

No deseamos cambios. Todo cambio constituye una amenaza para la estabilidad. Ésta es otra razón por la cual nos mostramos tan reacios a aplicar nuevos inventos. Todo descubrimiento de las ciencias puras es potencialmente subversivo; incluso la ciencia debe ser tratada a veces como un enemigo.

Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive.

Did you ever feel as though you had something inside you that was only waiting for you to give it a chance to come out? Some sort of extra power that you aren't using-you know, like all the water that goes down the falls instead of through the turbines?

And, anyhow, hadn't you better wait till you actually see the new world?

One day one would get up at six o'clock and pedal away to Kenilworth, or Stratford-on-Avon—anywhere. And within a radius of twenty miles there were always Norman churches and Tudor mansions to be seen in the course of an afternoon's excursion. Somehow they never did get seen, but all the same it was nice to feel that the bicycle was there, and that one fine morning one really might get up at six.

Experientia docet ? Experientia doesn't.