Archive

Quotes

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

—James Joyce, 1922

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

—G.K. Chesterton, 1911

What one man can invent another can discover.

—Arthur Conan Doyle, 1905

Appearances are a glimpse of the obscure.

—Anaxagoras, c. 450 BC

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

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 45 BC

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

—John Steinbeck, 1941

New things are always ugly.

—Willa Cather, 1921

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

—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851

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

—Herman Melville, 1853

The unknown is the largest need of the intellect.

—Emily Dickinson, 1876

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

—Zora Neale Hurston, 1942

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

—Maxine Hong Kingston, 1976

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

—André Gide, 1926