I'm currently reading The First Men in the Moon, by H. G. Wells. If you're not into Science Fiction, any of his books will change your mind (the book I've linked contains 5 of his best books including the aforementioned) - Wells paints elaborate pictures in your mind that make any fictional notion seem as real as life itself.
One passage in this book caught my attention. It captured humanity's urge to venture into the unexplored in beautiful prose, so I thought I'd share.
Why had we come to the moon? The thing presented itself to me as a perplexing problem. What is this spirit in man that urges him for ever to depart from happiness and security, to toil, to place himself in danger, to risk even a reasonable certainty of death? It dawned upon me that there in the moon as a thing I ought always to have known, that man is not made simply to go about being safe and comfortable and well fed and amused. Almost any man, if you put the thing to him, not in words, but in the shape of opportunities, will show that he knows as much. Against his interest, against his happiness, he is constantly being driven to do unreasonable things. Some force not himself impels him, and go he must.
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