I have always admired the humble last words of Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest minds of any age:
'I do not know what I may seem to the world. But as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.'
This reminds me of Bagehot's reference to Homer and the sea:
A man who has not read Homer is like a man who has not seen the ocean. There is a great object of which he has no idea.
