William Buckland awoke one night and told his wife, “My dear, I believe that Cheirotherium‘s footsteps are undoubtedly testudinal.” They induced a garden tortoise to walk through a paste of flour, and the impression it left matched the fossil footprint.

On summiting the Finsteraarhorn in 1845, M. Dollfus-Ausset cried, “The soul communes in the infinite with those icy peaks which seem to have their roots in the bowels of eternity!”

In 1919 Cecilia Payne bicycled to the Cambridge Solar Physics Observatory, found a man repairing the roof, and said, “I have come to ask why the Stark effect is not observed in stellar spectra.” He was E.A. Milne, and he didn’t know. “Later he became a good friend and a great inspiration to me.”

“I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent than in the extent of my power and dominion.” — Alexander

“It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.” — Agatha Christie

“Almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.” — Alfred North Whitehead

“The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.” — Edward R. Murrow

“To see what is in front of one’s nose requires a constant struggle.” — George Orwell

“How hard I find it to see what is right in front of my eyes!” — Wittgenstein

“Snow is a fictitious cleanliness.” — Goethe

“The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and have it found out by accident.” — Charles Lamb

“The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.” — Thomas Carlyle

“Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.” — Alexander Pope

“The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.” — Emerson