I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener I'm convinced of the opposite.

A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside thinking that his happiness lies outside him finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.

I think making mistakes and discovering them for yourself is of great value but to have someone else to point out your mistakes is a shortcut of the process.

There are two great days in a person's life - the day we are born and the day we discover why.

Seeds of great discoveries are constantly floating around us but they only take root in minds well prepared to receive them.

The very greatest things - great thoughts discoveries inventions - have usually been nurtured in hardship often pondered over in sorrow and at length established with difficulty.

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

One of the greatest discoveries a man makes one of his great surprises is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do.

We campaigned on the fact that we were going to have to take difficult decisions because of the state of the public finances. When we got into government we discovered that actually the public finances were in an even worse state than we thought.