The Case For My Life... Is This:

The Mathematician's Patterns, Like The Painter's Or The Poet's, Must Be Beautiful.

Most People Can Do Nothing At All Well

I Remember Once Going To See Him [ramanujan] When He Was Lying Ill At Putney. I Had Ridden In Taxi-cab No. 1729, And Remarked That The Number Seemed To Me Rather A Dull One, And That I Hoped It Was Not An Unfavourable Omen. "no," He Replied, "it Is A Very Interesting Number; It Is The Smallest Number Expressible As A Sum Of Two Cubes In Two Different Ways."

A Person’s First Duty, A Young Person’s At Any Rate, Is To Be Ambitious, And The Noblest Ambition Is That Of Leaving Behind Something Of Permanent Value.

The Primes Are The Raw Material Out Of Which We Have To Build Arithmetic, And Euclid's Theorem Assures Us That We Have Plenty Of Material For The Task.