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

—Francis Bacon, 1605

The unknown is the largest need of the intellect.

—Emily Dickinson, 1876

New things are always ugly.

—Willa Cather, 1921

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

—Maxine Hong Kingston, 1976

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

—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851

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

—Stanisław Jerzy Lec, 1957

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

—André Gide, 1926

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

—Edith Wharton, 1924

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

—Albert Einstein, 1936

Appearances are a glimpse of the obscure.

—Anaxagoras, c. 450 BC

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

—James Joyce, 1922

How gloriously legible are the constellations of the heavens!

—Anthony Trollope, 1859

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

—G.K. Chesterton, 1911

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

—Zora Neale Hurston, 1942

Science is a cemetery of dead ideas.

—Miguel de Unamuno, 1913

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

—John Steinbeck, 1941

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

—Herman Melville, 1853

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

—Susanne K. Langer, 1942

What one man can invent another can discover.

—Arthur Conan Doyle, 1905

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

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 45 BC

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

—Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 1825

What one man can invent another can discover.

—Arthur Conan Doyle, 1905

There are truths that prove their discoverers witless.

—Karl Kraus, 1909