Lapham’s Quarterly

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

What one man can invent another can discover.

How gloriously legible are the constellations of the heavens!

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

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are truths that prove their discoverers witless.

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

Science is a cemetery of dead ideas.

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

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

Appearances are a glimpse of the obscure.

What one man can invent another can discover.

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

New things are always ugly.

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

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

The unknown is the largest need of the intellect.