Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable desire to seek the truth.

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

How gloriously legible are the constellations of the heavens!

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. 

New things are always ugly.

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

There are truths that prove their discoverers witless.

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

The atavistic urge toward danger persists and its satisfaction is called adventure.

Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there.

Appearances are a glimpse of the obscure.

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

What one man can invent another can discover.