What is it that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man's
breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery!
To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are beholding
what human eye has not see before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere.
To give birth to an idea-an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of a field
that many a brain-plow had gone over before. To be the first--that is the idea.
To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else--these are
the things that confer a pleasure compared with other pleasures are tame and
commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial. Lifetimes of ecstasy crowded
into a single moment.
- Innocents Abroad
In our day we don't allow a hundred and thirty years to elapse between glimpses
of a marvel. If somebody should discover a creek in the county next to the one
that the North Pole is in, Europe and America would start fifteen costly expeditions
thither; one to explore the creek, and the other fourteen to hunt for each other.
- Life on the Mississippi
If there wasn't anything to find out, it would be dull. Even trying to find
out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying to find out and finding
out; and I don't know but more so.
- Eve's Diary
| Twenty years from now you
will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you
did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the
trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - This quote has been attributed to Mark Twain, but the attribution cannot be verified. The quote should not be regarded as authentic. |
 From Life magazine, Aug. 9, 1883 |
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