seashore quotes

They find pearlsby theseashore, diamondsand rubiesin certain cliffs, but never go out of set purpose to look for them.If they happento find some, they polishthem, and give them to the children who, when they are small, feel proud and pleased with such gaudy decorations. But after, when they grow a bit older, and notice that only babies like such toys, they lay them aside. Their parents don't have to sayanything, they simply put these trifles away out of a shamefaced sense that they're no longer suitable, just as our children when they grow up put away their rattles, marbles and dolls.

- SirThomas More
  Utopia (English translation1556), bk.2.

I know not what I mayappear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

- Sir Isaac Newton
Quoted in D Brewster (ed) Memoirs of Newton (1855), vol.2, ch.27.