Lapham’s Quarterly

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.

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

New things are always ugly.

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

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

Appearances are a glimpse of the obscure.

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

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

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

The unknown is the largest need of the intellect.

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

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

Science is a cemetery of dead ideas.

What one man can invent another can discover.

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

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

There are truths that prove their discoverers witless.

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

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

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

How gloriously legible are the constellations of the heavens!

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