“For that fine madness still he did retain
Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain.”
To Henry Reynolds, of Poets and Poesy (1627).
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Michael Drayton10
English poet 1563–1631Related quotes
“The jealous is possessed by a "fine mad devil" and a dull spirit at once.”
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No. 345
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John Stuart Mill book Autobiography
Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/149/mode/1up p. 149
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“Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
1900s, "The Study of Mathematics" (November 1907)
Context: Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty – a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry. What is best in mathematics deserves not merely to be learnt as a task, but to be assimilated as a part of daily thought, and brought again and again before the mind with ever-renewed encouragement.