The hunter for aphorisms on human nature has to fish in muddy water, and he is even condemned to find much of his own mind. – Francis H. Bradley, Aphorisms, 1930

I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there; but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page. – Ralph Waldo Emerson