Ambition is disfigured into arrogance when it becomes unmoored from self-awareness, from a realistic assessment of one's competences. - Maria Popova

we are animated by an intense connection to the landscapes and topographies of our formative years. An emotion known as topophilia, which I experienced while revisiting those mountain trails of my childhood, furnishes this affective-spatial memory that renders childhood as much a time as a place.

We are always harshest upon those foibles we see in others that we know bedevil our own natures - the ones that most gravely misbecome our self image - for blame is always easier than shame.

What invigorated Maria Mitchell that evening, and what would drive her for the remaining decades of her life, was not the king’s medal, nor the luster of worldwide recognition, but the sheer thrill of discovery — the ecstasy of having personally chipped a small fragment of knowledge from the immense monolith of the unknown, that elemental motive force of every sincere scientist.