Eureka Moments Quotes

In the folklore of science, there is the often-told story of the moment of discovery: the quickening of the pulse, the spectral luminosity of ordinary facts, the overheated, standstill second when observations crystallize and fall together into patterns, like pieces of a kaleidoscope. The apple drops from the tree. The man jumps up from a bathtub; the slippery equation balances itself.
But there is another moment of discovery - its antithesis - that is rarely recorded: the discovery of failure. It is a moment that a scientist often encounters alone. A patient's CT scan shows a relapsed lymphoma. A cell once killed by a drug begins to grow back. A child returns to the NCI with a headache. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

What we found in our conversations with these superachievers was that success di not come to them in the thunderclap of their Eureka! moments. Talent was just the beginning. Their sustained success depended on many factors -some in their control, and some not- but the first steps of these superachievers were to know themselves and to assess what they had to work with. Then, their progress toward their goals was furthered by their fierce dedication to the day-to-day struggle for achievement. ~ Camille Sweeney

Eureka!"s like the one Archimedes had when he stepped in a bathtub and suddenly realized the answer to the problem of testing metals' density are few and far between, and mostly it's just trying and failing and trying something else, feeding in data and eliminating variables and staring at the results, trying to figure out where you went wrong. ~ Connie Willis

Work grows out of other work, and there are very few eureka moments. ~ Anish Kapoor

Oh yeah - you have to write every day. Or every weekday. Because writing is a job. It's not eureka moments over and over. It's grueling work, panning for gold. You just keep at it and eventually you get a few grains. Or flakes. Or whatever gold looks like in rivers. Or maybe it's like fishing. Who cares? You just have to do it every day because you never know which day is going to be your productive day. ~ Tim Schafer

'Eureka' moments are very, very rare in my experience. It normally takes several weeks of experiments to tease out the truth, even when you have a really pretty good idea of what is going on. ~ Tim Hunt

The view is endlessly fulfilling. It is like the answer to a lifetime of questions and vague cravings. ~ Don DeLillo

Perhaps the journey towards epiphany is an unseen, steady process towards understanding. Likened to a combination safe, as you scroll the dial towards the inevitable correct combination you cannot tangibly see your progress. ~ Chris Matakas

There are occasionally eureka moments - off the top of my head, maybe Darth Vader's theme, you know, the imperial march. ~ John Williams

Fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while ~ Don Marquis

I think if I were dying and I heard of an act of injustice, it would start me up to a moment's life again. ~ Olive Schreiner

The most valuable moments and experiences that life has to offer are found only along its most treacherous paths. ~ Augusten Burroughs

We all long for heaven where God is, but we have it our power to be in heaven with him right now-to be happy with him at this very moment. But this means being: Loving as he loves, helping as he helps, giving as he gives, serving as he serves, rescuing as he rescues, being with him all 24 hours of the day, touching him in his distressing disguise. ~ Mother Teresa

I'm a dreamer; I have so little real life that I regard such momenta as this one, now, to be so rare that I can't help repeating these moments in my dreams. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I haven't had trouble with writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, clichéd writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesn't have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments. It seems writer's block is often a dislike of writing badly and waiting for writing better to happen. ~ Jennifer Egan

Her eyes, always sad, now looked into the mirror with particular hopelessness. "She's flattering me," thought the princess, and she turned away and went on reading. Julie, however, was not flattering her friend: indeed, the princess's eyes, large, deep, and luminous (sometimes it was as if rays of light came from them in sheaves), were so beautiful that very often, despite the unattractiveness of the whole face, those eyes were more attractive than beauty. But the princess had never seen the good expression of thise eyes, the expression they had in moments when she was not thinking of herself. As with all people, the moment she looked in the mirror, her face assumed a strained, unnatural, bad expression. ~ Leo Tolstoy

When I'm with my kids, I definitely try and be in the moment and wait till the end unless the mess poses a real danger, like slipping. But when I am cooking by myself, I definitely clean as I go to simplify. ~ Sarah Michelle Gellar

Time passes so fast. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

There is no harm in trying ... Trying improves your skills, enhances your stamina and encourages you to excel. Give it a try ... Even in trying moments, keep trying. You will never regret it! ~ Israelmore Ayivor

It was one of those moments that no scientist can ever reduce to numbers, try as she might. ~ Anne Fortier

Quit worrying about how everything is going to turn out. Live one day at a time; better yet, make the most of this moment. It's good to have a big – picture outlook, to set goals, to establish budgets and make plans, but if you're always living in the future, you're never really enjoying the present in the way God wants you to. ~ Joel Osteen

We breathe the light, we breathe the music, we breathe the moment as it passes through us. ~ Anne Rice

Can you remember the womb? How, in the moments before birth, The lines were washed from the map That told the route you'd come? ~ Terrance Hayes

I will never be a brain surgeon, and I will never play the piano like Glenn Gould.

But what keeps me up late at night, and constantly gives me reason to fret, is this: I don't know what I don't know. There are universes of things out there - ideas, philosophies, songs, subtleties, facts, emotions - that exist but of which I am totally and thoroughly unaware. This makes me very uncomfortable. I find that the only way to find out the fuller extent of what I don't know is for someone to tell me, teach me or show me, and then open my eyes to this bit of information, knowledge, or life experience that I, sadly, never before considered.

Afterward, I find something odd happens. I find what I have just learned is suddenly everywhere: on billboards or in the newspaper or SMACK: Right in front of me, and I can't help but shake my head and speculate how and why I never saw or knew this particular thing before. And I begin to wonder if I could be any different, smarter, or more interesting had I discovered it when everyone else in the world found out about this particular obvious thing. I have been thinking a lot about these first discoveries and also those chance encounters: those elusive happenstances that often lead to defining moments in our lives.

[…]

I once read that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I fundamentally disagree with this idea. I think that doing the same thi ~ Debbie Millman

One great concern that plagues very ambitious people is this: in the end, they'll get all the precious things they ever dreamed of and every precious accomplishment most expected and conceived they'd achieve . . . but on that path of ambition, they'd lose precious moments with the most precious people they've come across. However, they forge ahead on that path hoping, somehow, they might make up for it, sometime, in future. ~ Ufuoma Apoki

Life has to be in the moment, spontaneous and venerable. There isn't any winning or losing. Life itself, as it flowers in depth and subtlety, is the reward, and it isn't always an easy or fun process. We must learn to see that the issue of happiness is irrelevant. The relevant quest is the expansion of consciousness. ~ Richard Moss

Novels and stories are renderings of life; they cannot only keep us company, but admonish us, point us in new directions, or give us the courage to stay a given course. They can offer us kinsmen, kinswomen, comrades, advisors - offer us other eyes through which we might see ... Every ... student ... will all too quickly be beyond schooling, will be out there making a living and, too, just plain living - that is, trying to find and offer to others the affection and love that give purpose to our time spent here ... [Characters] can be cautionary figures ... who give us pause and help us in the private moments when we try to find our own bearings ~ Robert Coles

Somebody is n the hospital begging God for the opportunity u have right now. Step into your moment. ~ T.D. Jakes

It was one of those sort of apocalyptic moments. I remember within ten minutes of seeing the graphical user interface stuff, just knowing that every computer would work this way someday. It was so obvious once you saw it. It didn't require tremendous intellect. It was so clear. ~ Steve Jobs

True imagination and creativity don't come from thinking outside the box or letting ourselves go wild, just as true spontaneity does not come from dancing on a table on the weekend while you remain in your tedious job. They don't come out of great disruptive moments that break forth from an otherwise ordinary, drab life. They are part and parcel of how we live our every day; all moments can be creative and spontaneous when we experience the entire world as an open and expansive place. We get there by constantly cultivating our ability to imagine transcending our own experience. ~ Michael Puett

When God puts something in your heart and deep down you know it's a destiny moment, don't wait for ten confirmations. Do what God is asking you to do now. ~ Joel Osteen

If the artist succeeds in producing the impression of a movement which takes several moments for accomplishment, his work is certainly much less conventional than the scientific image, where time is abruptly suspended. ~ Auguste Rodin

If you get yourself out of politics, religion, everything, and think as a human, think based on love to everybody, at that moment you have a choice: to be an animal, or to be a human. I choose to be a human being, with conscience and responsibility. ~ Mosab Hassan Yousef

Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Then beneath the colour [of the paint] was the shape. She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly, when she looked: it was when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment's flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child. ~ Virginia Woolf

Power resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friendship is the most beautiful relation in ones life, It gives us the best part of our life, a reason to smile,some happy moments,sharing the worse feeling,Love you forever my dear friend,miss you every moment ~ Debolina

I have to think it's possible to suffer a great wrong and walk away from it. To build a life of small, exquisitely important moments. ~ Cinda Williams Chima

I don't think I would be very good at killing," Merla said.
"To be honest, nor do I. But you may have to."
A disturbing thought came to Merla.
"Faye," she asked, "have you killed a person?"
There was a moment's silence.
"Let's just say that I am familiar with the techniques. ~ Duncan Harper

No man would ever hold me this well.
I was made to be wrapped in these arms.
A woman could tell a lot by the way a man holds her. She could tell if he had the strength to endure the rougher moments. If he had a mighty yet kind heart. If he could make her feel safe and cherished.
Beau's embrace said all that and more. ~ Devney Perry

I think my first big heartbreak made me more compassionate about other people's heartaches. It enabled me to feel more for others when they are in moments of pain. ~ Kerry Washington

Looking back in retrospect, there were some great moments working with some great people, ... I don't know quite how to put it into words. I don't look at it quite the same way other people do. ~ Dave Mason

The science [geometry] is pursued for the sake of the knowledge of what eternally exists, and not of what comes for a moment into existence, and then perishes. ~ Plato