“I had a feeling once about Mathematics, that I saw it all—Depth beyond depth was revealed to me—the Byss and the Abyss. I saw, as one might see the transit of Venus—or even the Lord Mayor's Show, a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly how it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable: and how the one step involved all the others. It was like politics. But it was after dinner and I let it go!”

Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 3 (Examinations), p. 27.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I had a feeling once about Mathematics, that I saw it all—Depth beyond depth was revealed to me—the Byss and the Abyss.…" by Winston S. Churchill?
Winston S. Churchill photo
Winston S. Churchill 601
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1874–1965

Related quotes

Dante Alighieri photo

“I saw within Its depth how It conceives
all things in a single volume bound by Love,
of which the universe is the scattered leaves.”

Canto XXXIII, lines 85–87 (tr. Ciardi).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

Khaled Hosseini photo
John Shadegg photo

“I saw the mayor of New York said today, 'We're tough. We can do it.' Well, Mayor, how are you going to feel when it's your daughter that's kidnapped at school by a terrorist?”

John Shadegg (1949) American politician

Referring to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's comments on trying terrorists in criminal courts in NYC.
Quoted in
Terrorism

Amy Tan photo

“I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind.
-Lindo”

American Acheivement interview (1996)
Source: The Joy Luck Club
Context: Reading for me was a refuge. I could escape from everything that was miserable in my life and I could be anyone I wanted to be in a story, through a character. It was almost sinful how much I liked it. That's how I felt about it. If my parents knew how much I loved it, I thought they would take it away from me. I think I was also blessed with a very wild imagination because I can remember, when I was at an age before I could read, that I could imagine things that weren't real and whatever my imagination saw is what I actually saw. Some people would say that was psychosis but I prefer to say it was the beginning of a writer's imagination. If I believed that insects had eyes and mouths and noses and could talk, that's what they did. If I thought I could see devils dancing out of the ground, that's what I saw. If I thought lightning had eyes and would follow me and strike me down, that's what would happen. And I think I needed an outlet for all that imagination, so I found it in books.

Henry James photo
Anna Funder photo
Rani Mukerji photo
Black Elk photo

“And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.”

Black Elk (1863–1950) Oglala Lakota leader

Black Elk Speaks (1961)
Context: Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.

Taliesin photo

“I have gazed into the abyss, and the abyss has gazed into me. And neither of us liked what we saw.”

Brother Theodore (1906–2001) German-American monologuist and comedian

[Brother Theodore Complete Collection on Letterman, 1982-89, Don Giller, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj5fVnHWUl4]

Related topics