“Aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics—these matters of value, Wittgenstein agreed, lay in the realm of the unutterable. But it was natural an inevitable that men should speak of them, and much could be learned from the way in which people went about their foredoomed task of trying to say the unsayable. Moreover, it would not be clear where the boundary of sanctioned speech lay until an attempt had been made to cross it and that attempt had failed. Such efforts Wittgenstein regarded with benevolence. He treated them as reconnaissance expeditions, perilous to be sure, but well worth the effort expended on them.”

—H Stuart. Hughes, The Sea Change, as quoted by Laurence Weschler in Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees (1982).

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“Better a live donkey than a dead lion.”

–Ernest Shackleton, South Pole explorer

Rewards, Even in Failure