I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. – Isaac Newton (1642–1727), spoken the evening before his death

Nature has placed man under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. – Jeremy Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789

We look for some reward of our endeavours and are disappointed; not success, not happiness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our ineffectual efforts to do well. – Robert Louis Stevenson, “Pulvis et umbra,” 1888