“As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.”

“I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.”

“A mathematician who is not also something of a poet will never be a complete mathematician.”

“The difference between the poet and the mathematician is that the poet tries to get his head into the heavens while the mathematician tries to get the heavens into his head.”

“Nobody is publicly accepted as an expert on poetry unless he displays the sign of poet, mathematician, etc., but universal men want no sign and make hardly any distinction between the crafts of poet and embroiderer.Universal men are not called poets or mathematicians, etc. But they are all these things and judges of them too. No one could guess what they are, and they will talk about whatever was being talked about when they came in. One quality is not more noticeable in them than another, unless it becomes necessary to put it into practice, and then we remember it.”

“The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.”