What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery!
Mark TwainA man's house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential - here was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost...It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.
Mark TwainIt is not like studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No- and I see now plainly enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can't fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business.
Mark Twain