Mathematical Beauty Quotes

It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment. ~ Paul Dirac

The perfection of mathematical beauty is such ... that whatsoever is most beautiful and regular is also found to be most useful and excellent. ~ D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty. ~ Bertrand Russell

The harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty. ~ D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

The feeling of mathematical beauty, of the harmony of numbers and of forms, of geometric elegance. It is a genuinely aesthetic feeling, which all mathematicians know ~ Henri Poincare

In my opinion, the black hole is incomparably the most exciting and the most important consequence of general relativity. Black holes are the places in the universe where general relativity is decisive. But Einstein never acknowledged his brainchild. Einstein was not merely skeptical, he was actively hostile to the idea of black holes. He thought that the black hole solution was a blemish to be removed from his theory by a better mathematical formulation, not a consequence to be tested by observation. He never expressed the slightest enthusiasm for black holes, either as a concept or as a physical possibility. Oddly enough, Oppenheimer too in later life was uninterested in black holes, although in retrospect we can say that they were his most important contribution to science. The older Einstein and the older Oppenheimer were blind to the mathematical beauty of black holes, and indifferent to the question whether black boles actually exist.

How did this blindness and this indifference come about? ~ Freeman Dyson

What makes the theory of relativity so acceptable to physicists in spite of its going against the principle of simplicity is its great mathematical beauty. This is a quality which cannot be defined, any more than beauty in art can be defined, but which people who study mathematics usually have no difficulty in appreciating. ~ Paul Dirac

Theoretical physicists accept the need for mathematical beauty as an act of faith ... For example, the main reason why the theory of relativity is so universally accepted is its mathematical beauty. ~ Paul Dirac

Those who assert that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the beautiful or the good are in error. For these sciences say and prove a great deal about them; if they do not expressly mention them, but prove attributes which are their results or definitions, it is not true that they tell us nothing about them. The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree. ~ Aristotle.

You don't need to look at the beauty to feel the love. ~ Anthony T. Hincks

Truth: You have to talk to a boy-really talk,if you want him to see past the fact that you're not beautiful.
Truth: I'm not beautiful. Or much of a conversationalist.
Truth: I'm not entirely sure that the stuff behind the not-beautiful is going to be all that alluring, either. ~ Melissa Jensen

The beauty of the picture is an abiding concrete of the painter's vision. ~ Hartley Coleridge

The subtle hues of gold and yellow and the fresh greens and the pepper red seemed to spiral into a kaleidoscope of shapes and forms that made the tips of a person's toes tingle, so that some were inclined to remove their shoes in its presence. ~ Jeffry R. Halverson

Alan Turing gave us a mathematical model of digital computing that has completely withstood the test of time. He gave us a very, very clear description that was truly prophetic. ~ George Dyson

For such, Being made beautiful overmuch, Consider beauty a sufficient end, Lose natural kindness and maybe The heart-revealing intimacy That chooses right, and never find a friend. r ~ William Butler Yeats

I'd rather live in a world where I get to love the moon than in one where I don't, even if the moon won't return the feeling. ~ Alex London

If you take a look around this great big world, every beautiful thing that you see God created. ~ Heather Wolf

I will miss the horses," said Beauty a little wistfully.
"Perhaps you will become fond of the goat," said Jeweltongue. "Or even the chickens."
"Does one ever grow fond of chickens?" said Beauty dubiously. "Perhaps the goat. ~ Robin McKinley

When Sleeping Beauty wakes up, the whole palace is upset. "You must go back to sleep," her mother tells her, "It's not time." From what she understands, the Prince hasn't come to rescue her yet. ~ Mads Sukalikar

The idea of the past is as useless as the idea of the future. Both could be invoked by anybody about anything. There is never any more beauty than there is now. There is no more joy or wonder or sorrow than there is now, nor perfection, nor any more evil nor any more good than there is now. ~ Richard Flanagan

Becoming healthy and confident in body, mind and spirit is a journey that brings discovery and opportunity. It is an invitation to live a life of greater beauty, dignity, wisdom and love...to respond to our world from a place of stillness and serenity...and to live our lives from our highest purpose and potential. ~ Lorrie Jones

Doubtless almost any intense emotion may open our 'inward eye' to the beauty of reality. Falling in love appears to do it for some people. The beauties of nature or the exhilaration of artistic creation does it for others. Probably any high experience may momentarily stretch our souls up on tiptoe, so that we catch a glimpse of that marvelous beauty which is always there, but which we are not often tall enough to perceive. ~ Margaret Prescott Montague

The beauty of writing is imagining new endings to a time of darkness, like burning off a morning fog with the heat and clarity of the sun. ~ J.J. Brown

The Clash had a unique, special relationship with Scotland. Perhaps it was something to do with the energy, anger and beauty in their music. In Scotland at that time, there was a lot of to be angry about. And a great need of some energy and beauty. ~ John Niven

Athena's jealousy made a monster of fair Medusa.
I often wonder what beauty my own demons have destroyed. ~ Nichole McElhaney

When we are still,
all settles into place.
We take time to see the beauty.
We take time to see the heart.
And we naturally gravitate
to others
that resonate that inner calm.
When we are still. ~ Tom Althouse

The underlying questions of appetite, after all, are formidable - What would satisfy? How much do you need, and of what? What are the true passions, the real hungers behind the ostensible goals of beauty or slenderness? ~ Caroline Knapp

I marvel at everything as if it were new. ~ Anna Akhmatova

Sometimes it takes a scar to expose the beauty. I prefer a world full of contrast. It's much more interesting. ~ Katie Delahanty

Being beautiful had never prevented her from remaining in the woods alone before, but there was nothing she could do about it. Beauty was what gave him the right to talk to her as if they had been introduced, and take her hand, and make her wear his cloak, and take her from her tree and to his home. ~ Mallory Ortberg

What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his living unison, not his own isolate salvation of his "soul." Man wants his physical fulfillment first and foremost, since now, once and once only, he is in the flesh and potent. For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human soul, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family. There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Most of all, it was the wild music that impressed Matt. It did the same thing that playing the piano had done when he was frightened and lonely. It took him into another world where only beauty existed and where he was sage from hatred and disappointment and death. ~ Nancy Farmer

Fortune's fool! How we humans lie upon beauty like lizards upon a sun-baked rock. ~ Roman Payne

A critical step was made sometime before the ninth century AD, when a new partial script was invented, one that could store and process mathematical data with unprecedented efficiency. This partial script was composed of ten signs, representing the numbers from 0 to 9. Confusingly, these signs are known as Arabic numerals even though they were first invented by the Hindus (even more confusingly, modern Arabs use a set of digits that look quite different from Western ones). But the Arabs get the credit because when they invaded India they encountered the system, understood its usefulness, refined it, and spread it through the Middle East and then to Europe. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

When they had understood the hoopoe's words,
A clamour of complaint rose from the birds:
'Although we recognize you as our guide,
You must accept - it cannot be denied -
We are a wretched, flimsy crew at best,
And lack the bare essentials for this quest.
Our feathers and our wings, our bodies' strength
Are quite unequal to the journey's length;
For one of us to reach the Simorgh's throne
Would be miraculous, a thing unknown.
[...] He seems like Solomon, and we like ants;
How can mere ants climb from their darkened pit
Up to the Simorgh's realm? And is it fit
That beggars try the glory of a king?
How ever could they manage such a thing?'

The hoopoe answered them: 'How can love thrive
in hearts impoverished and half alive?
"Beggars," you say - such niggling poverty
Will not encourage truth or charity.
A man whose eyes love opens risks his soul -
His dancing breaks beyond the mind's control.
[...] Your heart is not a mirror bright and clear
If there the Simorgh's form does not appear;
No one can bear His beauty face to face,
And for this reason, of His perfect grace,
He makes a mirror in our hearts - look there
To see Him, search your hearts with anxious care. ~ Attar Of Nishapur

But my whole body is one pain. I cannot stand on my legs anymore. I stagger. I fall back on my bed. My eyes close and fill with smarting tears. I want to be crucified on the wall, but I cannot. My body becomes heavier and heavier and filled with sharper pain. My flesh is enraged against me.
I hear voices through the wall. The next room vibrates with a distant sound, a mist of sound which scarcely comes through the wall.
I shall not be able to listen anymore, or look into the room, or hear anything distinctly. And I, who have not cried since my childhood, I cry now like a child because of all that I shall never have. I cry over lost beauty and grandeur. I love everything that I should have embraced. ~ Henri Barbusse

He has made me wary of chronological snobbery. That is, he showed me that newness is no virtue and oldness is no vice. Truth and beauty and goodness are not determined by when they exist. Nothing is inferior for being old, and nothing is valuable for being modern. This has freed me from the tyranny of novelty and opened for me the wisdom of the ages. ~ John Piper

The geometer offers to the physicist a whole set of maps from which to choose. One map, perhaps, will fit the facts better than others, and then the geometry which provides that particular map will be the geometry most important for applied mathematics. ~ G.H. Hardy

It's more than the color.' He lifts my chin a little and our eyes reconnect. 'They have a dark line around the edge of the iris, a thing of natural beauty that brings your eyes to life. And they are intense; they shine like they're reflecting the light of a thousand stars, and they reflec...t me, too, and they make me want to be everything to you. And when you get angry, they dance a little, and every time it weakens my heart and makes me smile. ~ David Cristofano

There is hope and a kind of beauty in there somewhere, if you look for it. ~ H.R. Giger

Our obedience is God's pleasure when it proves that God is our treasure. This is good news, because it means very simply that the command to obey is the command to be happy in God. The commandments of God are only as hard to obey as the promises of God are hard to believe. The Word of God is only as hard to obey as the beauty of God is hard to cherish. ~ John Piper

Creative people often feel highs of joy and lows of sorrow that others may never experience, and perhaps could not even handle if they did. Little wonder many outside the creative world mistake (or dismiss) eccentric responses of the spirit as weakness or mental illness. But in the end, these dismissive souls will never know what it is to be moved by tears by the beauty of rose or brought to joy by sunlight filtering through the leaves of spring or autumn. The creative walk in glades invisible to those outside their realms. ~ Duncan Long

She saw beauty in ordinary little things and took pleasure in it (and this was just as well because she had had very little pleasure in her life). She took pleasure in a well-made cake, a smoothly ironed napkin, a pretty blouse, laundered and pressed; she liked to see the garden well dug, the rich soil brown and gravid; she loved her flowers. When you are young you are too busy with yourself... you haven't time for ordinary little things but, when you leave youth behind, your eyes open and you see magic and mystery all around you: magic in the flight of a bird, the shape of a leaf, the bold arch of a bridge against the sky, footsteps at night and a voice calling in the darkness, the moment in a theatre before the curtain rises, the wind in the trees, or (in winter) an apple-branch clothed with pure white snow and icicles hanging from from a stone and sparkling with rainbow colours. ~ D.E. Stevenson

Boys do not pursue mathematical activities at a higher rate than girls do because they are better at mathematics. They do so, at least partially, because they think they are better. ~ Cordelia Fine

You are the storyteller and the editor of your book of life. So write tales of imagination, tragedy, and adventure and illustrate it with the colors of beauty. ~ Debasish Mridha

Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty? ~ Paul Gauguin

There are some parts of the world that, once visited, get into your heart and won't go. For me, India is such a place. When I first visited, I was stunned by the richness of the land, by its lush beauty and exotic architecture, by its ability to overload the senses with the pure, concentrated intensity of its colors, smells, tastes, and sounds. It was as if all my life I had been seeing the world in black and white and, when brought face-to-face with India, experienced everything re-rendered in brilliant technicolor. ~ Keith Bellows

In every change, in every falling leaf there is some pain, some beauty. And that's the way new leaves grow. ~ Amit Ray

Beauty is deeper than just what you look at in a picture. You could fancy what you like, but as a woman my mother always raised us to believe in ourselves. I'm very grateful for the fact that my mother brought me up that way. ~ Alek Wek

The future belongs to thouse with open minds aand open hearts, who can appreciate beauty in all it's forms. ~ Kevyn Aucoin

If the search for happiness is the underlying quest of our lives, it seems only natural that it should simultaneously be the essential theme to which beauty alludes. ~ Alain De Botton