"Sordet cognita veritas" is a shrewd aphorism of Seneca. A truth, once known, falls into comparative insignificance. - Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet

In life," as the great Pascal observes, "we always believe that we are seeking repose, while, in reality, all that we ever seek is agitation.

[T]he sciences always studied with keenest interest are those in a state of progress and uncertainty: absolute certainty and absolute completion would be the paralysis of any study; and the last worst calamity that could befall man... would be that full and final possession of speculative truth, which he now vainly anticipates as the consummation of his intellectual happiness.

[I]n the very term Philosophy... the man who first declared that he was not a... possessor, but a... seeker of truth, at once enounced the true end of human speculation, and embodied it in a significant name.