Quotes About Discovery

In childhood, one imagines that any door unopened may open upon a wonder, a place different from all the places one knows. That is because in childhood it has so often proved to be so; the child, knowing nothing of any place except his own, is astonished and delighted by novel sights that an adult would readily have anticipated.

For years I had known joy in nothing but victories, and now I felt myself a boy again. When I had wished to climb the Great Keep, it had never occurred to me that the Great Keep itself might wish to climb the sky; I knew better now. But this ship at least was climbing beyond the sky, and I wanted to climb with her.

A child, not knowing what is extraordinary and what commonplace, usually lights midway between the two, finds interest in incidents adults consider beneath notice, and calmly accepts the most improbable occurrences.

the kind of place where one finds objects that appear to have come from nowhere …

I thought I saw something and borrowed his big brass telescope. And there it was. The tall, proud trees and the waves lapping a beach of blood-colored sand. I looked and looked, and pretty soon I started to cry. If I could tell you why, I would, but I cannot. Tears ran down my face, and I could not breathe right. I took the telescope down and wiped my eyes and blew my nose. And when I looked again, it was gone.

Each picture in the room beyond contained a book. Sometimes they were many, or prominent; some I had to study for some time before I saw the corner of a binding thrusting from the pocket of a woman's skirt or realized that some strangely wrought spool held words spun like thread.

The process is the goal.

Take yourself in. Ask the questions no one ever asked you. Keep going until you know the answer and you know who's asking. Until you realize- it's not far away- that the essence of you, like the sky, was always here. You just happened to get distracted by the local weather for a few decades.

You know that feeling when you first arrive in a new city? However tired you are, however shattered by the flight, you are impatient to get out and sample the streets, the life, the action.

The discovery in art is often gradual, a process of minor discoveries riddled with uncertainties and the potential for making that which is discovered vanish before your eyes, like a mirage.

Your own exploration therefore has to be personalized; you're doing it for yourself, increasing your own store of particular knowledge, walking your own eccentric version of the city.

The best walk is where you get lost then return. this reminds me of all the random hikes i take that make my soul happy and days when i was little that mom would take us out for sunday drives with the purpose of getting lost just because the adventure was fun (i still enjoy this...) love my mom. thanks, linda :)

Taken aback by the discovery, a little too late, that tropical rain has the volume of a bathroom shower, I splashed on to a train for Panama City, put up at the Hotel Europa and restored equanimity with Planter's Punch. A world in which so delectable a drink existed, as well as the thirst necessary to deal with two successive pints of it, could not be wholly bad. In the evening I set out to inspect North American civilisation.

It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value

Every kind of falsehood and truth is present in public opinion, but it is the prerogative of the great man to discover the truth within it. He who expresses the will of his age, tells it what its will is, and accomplishes this will, is the great man of the age.

In vain do we extend our view into the heavens, and pry into the entrails of the earth, in vain do we consult the writings of learned men, and trace the dark footsteps of antiquity; we need only draw the curtain of words, to behold the fairest tree of knowledge, whose fruit is excellent, and within the reach of our hand.

I give up the point for the present, reserving still a right to detract my opinion in case I shall hereafter discover any false step in my progress to it.

What we want to see is the child in pursuit of the knowledge not the knowledge in pursuit of the child.

The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal.

and after all, the wrong road always leads somewhere.

it's always the patient who has to take the chance when an experiment is necessary. And we can find out nothing without experiment.

Just when I discovered the meaning of life, they changed it.

I've never owned a telescope, but it's something I'm thinking of looking into.