quest quotes

You who desired so muchin vain to ask Yet fed your hunger like an endless task, Dared dignify the labor, bless the quest Achieved that stillness ultimately best, Being, of all, least sought for: Emily, hear!

- (Harold) Hart Crane
  'To Emily Dickinson', in The Nation, 29  Jun.

   'Butonethyng begyledus, that wemyght nat setheHoly Grayle hit was so preciously coverde.Wherefore I woll make here a vow that to-morne, withoute longer abydynge,I shall laboure in the queste of the Sankgreall.'

- SirThomas   d.1471 Malory
c.1470  Sir Gawain. Morte d'Arthur, bk.13, ch.7.

It isnot his possession of knowledge, of irrefutabletruth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.

- Sir Karl Raimund Popper
  The Logic of Scientific Discovery.

Man is the shuttle, to whose winding quest And passage through these looms God ordered motion, but ordained no rest.

- Henry Vaughan
  Silex Scintillans,'Man'.

   Religion issomething which stands beyond, behind, and within the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.

- Alfred North Whitehead
  Science and the ModernWorld.