Discovery

Sherard Blaw, the dramatist who had discovered himself, and who had given so unstintingly of his discovery to the world. ~~ Saki

Literature … is the rediscovery of childhood. ~~ Georges Bataille

Watch a man in times of … adversity to discover what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off. ~~ Lucretius

From error to error one discovers the entire truth. ~~ Sigmund Freud

On many American campuses the only qualification for admission was the ability actually to find the campus and then discover a parking space. ~~ Malcolm Bradbury

To a generous mind few circumstances are more afflicting than a discovery of perfidy in those whom we have trusted. ~~ Ann Radcliffe [The Romance of the Forest]

I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out. ~~ Katherine Dunn

When you travel your first discovery is that you do not exist. ~~ Elizabeth Hardwick

The first sign of maturity is the discovery that the volume knob also turns to the left. ~~ Unattributed

I learned long ago that the only satisfaction of authorship lies in finding the very few who understand what we mean. As for outside rewards, there is not one that I have ever discovered. ~~ Ellen Glasgow

When you were kids, [your sister] made you nuts. Much later, you discover why you hurt each other but love each other even more. ~~ Patricia Volk

Many a man has discovered a relationship with his father years after leaving home. But even at this stage of life, the same two ingredients are needed as when our children were small: time, and the courage to seize the day. ~~ Rob Parsons [The Sixty Minute Father]

No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit. ~~ Helen Keller

Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do than what one can do. ~~ Lin Yutang

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance--it is the illusion of knowledge. ~~ Daniel J. Boorstin

[Of ex-President Eisenhower at the Republican convention of 1964:] Reading a speech with his usual sense of discovery. ~~ Gore Vidal

Look at those cows and remember that the greatest scientists in the world have never discovered how to make grass into milk. ~~ Michael Pupin

It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, "I don't know." ~~ William Somerset Maugham

Why do other people rob you with their understanding, stealing your discoveries and your guesses, invading the special domain of your insight? ~~ Elizabeth Bibesco

This is the first time I ever heard it said that the crime is not the burglary, but the discovery of the burglary. ~~ Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.

From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover that you have wings. ~~ Helen Hayes

No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing it is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them. ~~ Alan Watts

We discover in ourselves what others hide from us, and we recognize in others what we hid from ourselves. ~~ Luc de Clapiers de Vauvenargues

Tolerably early in life I discovered that one of the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to go about unlabeled. The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog. ~~ Thomas Huxley

The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why. ~~ Albert Einstein

She chuckled now and again at a joke, but it was the amused grim chuckle of a person who looks up to discover that they have coincided with the needs of nature in a bird. ~~ Djuna Barnes [Nightwood]

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected. ~~ Oscar Wilde

The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe. ~~ David Hare

The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind. ~~ William James

The secret of my success is that at an early age I discovered I was not God. ~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own. ~~ Sydney Harris

Discover someone to help shoulder your misfortunes, Then you will never be alone … neither fate, nor the crowd, so readily attacks two. ~~ Baltasar Gracian

The secret of all those who make discoveries is that they regard nothing as impossible. ~~ Justus Liebig

In my youth, I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order. ~~ Will Durant

Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing, and the overtaking and possessing of a wish discovers the folly of the chase. ~~ William Congreve

I was thinking of my patients, and how the worst moment for them was when they discovered they were masters of their own fate. It was not a matter of bad or good luck. When they could no longer blame fate, they were in despair. ~~ Anais

Nin

I have been a woman for fifty years, and I've never yet been able to discover precisely what I am. ~~ Jean Giraudoux

I'm not a great believer that there are deeper secrets behind the distance between [men and women] that are locked up somewhere waiting to be discovered. Generally, I don't think people talk very much, regardless of who they are. ~~ Elvis Costello

In saying my prayers, I discovered the voice of an innermost self, the raw nerve of my identity. ~~ Gelsey Kirkland

It is not advisable… to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener. ~~ Ayn Rand [Atlas Shrugged]

If we insist that public life be reserved for those whose personal history is pristine, we are not going to get paragons of virtue running our affairs. We will get the very rich, who contract out the messy things of life; the very dull, who have nothing to hide and nothing to show; and the very devious, expert at covering their tracks and ambitious enough to risk their discovery. ~~ Charles Krauthammer

If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live. ~~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Freedom comes only from seeing the ignorance of your critics and discovering the emptiness of their virtue. ~~ David Seabury

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. ~~ Will Durant

History is the discovering of the constant and universal principles of human nature. ~~ David Hume

A government treaty gave Cherokees their land as long as the grass grows and the water flows, but when they discovered oil, they took it back because there was nuthin' in the treaty about oil. ~~ Will Rogers

Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present and future. We make discoveries about ourselves. ~~ Gail Lumet Buckley

[At the moment of his discovery of champagne:] Come quickly, I am tasting the stars! ~~ Dom Perignon

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in. ~~ Rachel Carson

I believe that an excellent way to discover the prevailing attitudes of any era--social, moral, political--is to study its major trials. ~~ Raymond Paul

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. ~~ Arthur C. Clarke

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. ~~ Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi

There is no such thing as the pursuit of happiness, but there is the discovery of joy. ~~ J. Grentell

Children, like animals, use all their senses to discover the world. Then artists come along and discover it the same way all over again. ~~ Eudora Welty

Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later… that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life. ~~ Tom Wolfe

The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible; what the second duty is, no one has yet discovered. ~~ Oscar Wilde

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. ~~ Marcel Proust

Life begins as a quest of the child for the man and ends as a journey by the man to rediscover the child. ~~ Laurens Van Der Post

[On the birth of his son:] I put my hand over hers and told her… quite seriously, not to get too attached to the little thing, because she couldn't keep him. I did this to try to spare her what I had seen happen to other women… who were nearly destroyed by the discovery that, purely and simply, children are crops. One raises them and they go away. ~~ Preston Sturges, Sr.

Well, I would do just like Mr. Coolidge--I would go in there and keep still and say nothing. He is the first president to discover that what the American people want is to be left alone. ~~ Will Rogers

I'd discovered you never know yourself until you're tested and that you don't even know you're being tested until afterwards, and that in fact there isn't anyone giving the test except yourself. ~~ Marilyn French

One of the things I've discovered in general about raising kids is that they really don't give a damn if you walked five miles to school. They deal with what's happening now. ~~ Patty Duke

It is not you or I that is important… What is important is anyone's coming awake and discovering a place… this speckled mineral sphere, our present world. ~~ Annie Dillard

One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world. ~~ William Hazlitt

History is written by the winners. The books say the Indians were bad guys and the whites just needed a little land. It's like, "Excuse me, let me take your car. I'm discovering it. I'm putting my flag on your windshield." ~~ Mario Van Peebles

When you aim for perfection, you discover it's a moving target. ~~ George Fisher

He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder. ~~ M. C. Escher

'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

A wonderful discovery--psychoanalysis. It makes simple people feel they're complex. ~~ S. N. Behrman

At 20 we worry about what others think of us; at 40 we don't care about what others think of us; at 60 we discover they haven't been thinking about us at all. ~~ Unattributed

Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead to unreasonable expectations and eventual disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around the room with royal-blue chickens. ~~ Fran Lebowitz [Social Studies]

If men could regard the events of their own lives with more open minds, they would frequently discover that they did not really desire the things they failed to obtain. ~~ Andre Maurois

I seem to have been like a child playing on the sea shore, finding now and then a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me. ~~ Isaac Newton

In making one discovery we never fail to get an incomplete knowledge of others of which we previously had no idea, so that we cannot solve one problem without finding new ones. ~~ Joseph Priestly

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered; it is something molded. ~~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt. ~~ Max Lerner

Nothing is ever simple. What do you do when you discover you LIKE parts of the role you're trying to escape. ~~ Marilyn French

I discovered when I had a child of my own that I had become a biased observer of small children. Instead of looking at them with affectionate by nonpartisan eyes, I saw each of them as older or younger, bigger or smaller, more or less graceful, intelligent, or skilled than my own child. ~~ Margaret Mead

There is probably nothing more sublime than discontent transmuted into a work of art, a scientific discovery, and so on. ~~ Eric Hoffer

What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be. ~~ Ellen Burstyn

Panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is that they are the touchstone of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. ~~ Thomas Paine

A vacation should be just long enough for the boss to find out he misses you, but not long enough for him to discover he can get along without you. ~~ Joe Moore

Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful or to discover something that is true. ~~ William Ralph Inge

From quiet homes and first beginning,

Out to the undiscovered ends,

There's nothing worth the wear of winning,

But laughter and the love of friends. ~~ Hillaire Belloc

As siblings, we were inextricably bound, even though our connections were loose and frayed… And each time we met, we discovered to our surprise and dismay how quickly the intensity of childhood feelings reappeared… No matter how old we got or how often we tried to show another face, reality was filtered through yesterday's memories. ~~ Jane Mersky Leder

I am not wise. Not knowing, and learning to be comfortable with not knowing, is a great discovery. ~~ Sue Bender [Plain and Simple]

I invent nothing. I rediscover. ~~ Auguste Rodin

Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself. ~~ Alexander Graham Bell (see Said Who?)

'Tis my opinion every man cheats in his own way, and he is only honest who is not discovered. ~~ Susannah Centlivre

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. ~~ Eric Hoffer

The good composer is slowly discovered; the bad composer is slowly found out. ~~ Ernest Newman

Man's "progress" is but a gradual discovery that his questions have no meaning. ~~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Wonder and despair are two sides of a spinning coin. When you open yourself to one, you open yourself to the other. You discover a capacity for joy that wasn't in you before. Wonder is the promise of restoration: as deeply as you dive, so may you rise. ~~ Christina Baldwin

It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help. ~~ Miss Manners [Judith Martin]

The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage. ~~ Joseph Conrad

True. I used to see a lot of hope. I saw men tear down the veils behind which the truth had been hidden. But then the same men, when they have power in their hands at last, began to find the veils useful. They made many more. Life has not changed. Only some people have been growing, becoming different, that is all. After a youth spent fighting the white man, why should not the president discover as he grows older that his real desire has been to be like the white governor himself, to live above all the blackness in the big old slave castle? ~~ Ayi Kwei Armah

The "discovery" of poverty at the beginning of the 1960s was something like the "discovery" of America almost five hundred years earlier. In the case of each of these exotic terrains, plenty of people were on the site before the discoverers ever arrived. ~~ Barbara Ehrenreich [Fear of Falling]

Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own. ~~ Jonathan Swift

It has been left to our generation to discover that you can move heaven and earth to save five minutes and then not have the faintest idea what to do with them when you have saved them. ~~ C. E. M. Joad

When you read history it is quite astonishing to discover that there never was a day when men thought times were really good. Every generation in history has been haunted by the feeling of crisis. ~~ Harold Walker

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries. ~~ A. A. Milne

I see nothing wrong with acting out one's dreams, if only to discover that they never had a shred of reality about them. ~~ Amanda Cross [Carolyn Heilbrun]

Almost all travel is lost on teenagers… The young do not discover the world. They discover themselves, and travel only interrupts their trips to the interior. ~~ Jessamyn West

Pity is exhaustible. What a terrible discovery. ~~ Enid Bagnold [A Diary Without Dates]

If we all discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to tell them that they loved them. ~~ Christopher Morley