Yes, but when I discovered it, it stayed discovered.

 

Yes, but when I discovered it, it stayed discovered.
--
On being told that a piece of work he thought was his discovery had duplicated an earlier mathematician's work. Quoted in "Pity the Scientist Who Discovers the Discovered" by Gina Kolata, New York Times: Week in Review (2006-02-05)

 

Lawrence Shepp

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She was a grown up now, and she discovered that being a grown up was not quite what she had suspected it would be when she was a child. She had thought then that she would make a conscious decision one day to simply put her toys and games and little make-believes away. Now she discovered that was not what happened at all. Instead, she discovered, interest simply faded. It became less and less and less, until a dust of years drew over the bright pleasures of childhood, and they were forgotten.

 

Stephen King

 

Total innovation is a flight from comparison and also from imitation. Those who discover things for themselves and express them in their own way are not overly bothered by the fact that others have already discovered these things — have even discovered them over and over again — and have expressed what they found in all manner of ways.

 

Eric Hoffer

 

The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious; what I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied.

 

Sigmund Freud

 

Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.

 

Leo Tolstoy

 

It was so frightening at the time to be seventeen and have heart monitors hooked up to you. That was the moment the songwriter in me was born. I discovered a whole other side of me. I came home that night and started writing lyrics. I discovered it all at once: It was like opening up a lockbox, and inside was a depth that I didn't even know I had as a person, or a writer — incredible creativity and vision and neurosis, complete neurosis. They all go together in a package.

 

John Mayer