Quotes About Discovery

We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.

W]e must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony.

Most of us who turn to any subject with love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love.

whatever else remained the same, the light had changed, and you cannot find the pearly dawn at noonday. The fact is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with whose nature you are acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few imaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in the continuity of married companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse than what you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogether the same.

I would not creep along the coast but steer Out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars.

Everything comes to light, Nancy, sooner or later. When God Almighty wills it, our secrets are found out.

A map was a fine thing to study when you were disposed to think of something else, being made up of names that would turn into a chime if you went back upon them.

That is beautiful mysticism, it is a—" "Please not to call it by any name," said Dorothea, putting out her hands entreatingly. "You will say it is Persian, or something geographical. It is my life. I have found it out and cannot part with it.

Secrets are rarely betrayed or discovered according to any programme our fear has sketched out. Fear is almost always haunted by terrible dramatic scenes, which recur in spite of the best-argued probabilities against them.

The early days of an acquaintance almost always have this importance for us, and fill up a larger space in our memory than longer subsequent periods, which have been less filled with discovery and new impressions.

As the stone which has been kicked by generations of clowns may come by curious little links of effect under the eyes of a scholar, through whose labors it may at last fix the date of invasions and unlock religions, so a bit of ink and paper which has long been an innocent wrapping or stop-gap may at last be laid open under the one pair of eyes which have knowledge enough to turn it into the opening of a catastrophe.

I went into science a great deal myself at one time; but I saw it would not do. It leads to everything; you can let nothing alone.

the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

with the eager interest of a fresh young nature to which every variety in experience is an epoch.

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.

Proceeding by loops and zig-zags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to be.

I used to think I could never bear life if it kept on being the same every day, and I must always be doing things of no consequence and never know anything greater.

That is a beautiful mysticism - it is a - ' 'Please not to call it by any name,' said Dorothea, putting out her hands entreatingly. 'You will say it is Persian, or something else geographical. It is my life. I have found it out, and cannot part with it.

and in the long valley of her life, which looked so flat and empty of way-marks, guidance would come as she walked along the road, and saw her fellow-passengers by the way.

More than three centuries and a half ago, in the mid spring-time of 1492, we are sure that the angel of the dawn, as he travelled with broad slow wing from the Levant to the Pillars of Hercules, and from the summits of the Caucasus across all the snowy Alpine ridges to the dark nakedness of the Western isles, saw nearly the same outline of firm land and unstable sea

a terrible scorching light showed him the hidden letters that changed the meaning of the past.

A child's name is his portal to the world.

Life is half spent before we know what it is.

Every path hath a puddle.