I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.

New things are always ugly.

I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

The unknown is the largest need of the intellect.

The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a star.

How gloriously legible are the constellations of the heavens!

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

Appearances are a glimpse of the obscure.

What one man can invent another can discover.

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

When they shout “Long live progress,” always ask, “Progress of what?”