C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Discoveries
A new principle is an inexhaustible source of new views.
All great discoveries are made by men whose feelings run ahead of their thinkings.
Obedience does not stop for mystery, but, going on, sees twilight brighten into day. How can wheat and corn become energy to think, and love, and work? Who can tell, but who can doubt? When we obey God’s laws, it is as if an angel troubled the water, and instantly life and power emerge. Loyalty discovers. It is not merely the illumination but the transfiguration of life; a brave departure, and then as discovery; “Westward-ho,” and then a new world.
It is a mortifying truth, and ought to teach the wisest of us humility, that many of the most valuable discoveries have been the result of chance, rather than of contemplation, and of accident, rather than of design.