Discovery
What is it that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man’s breast with pride above that which any experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where non other have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea – to discover a great thought – 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 which other pleasure are tame and commonplace… These are the men who have really lived – who have actually comprehended what pleasure is – who have crowded lifetimes of ecstasy into a single moment.
– Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad (1869)
Leave a Reply