Lapham’s Quarterly

The unknown is the largest need of the intellect.

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

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

There are truths that prove their discoverers witless.

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

How gloriously legible are the constellations of the heavens!

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

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

Science is a cemetery of dead ideas.

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

New things are always ugly.

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

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

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

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

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

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

What one man can invent another can discover.

Appearances are a glimpse of the obscure.

What one man can invent another can discover.

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

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