Theory Attracts Practice As The Magnet Attracts

If Others Would But Reflect On Mathematical Truths As Deeply And As Continuously As I Have, They Would Make My Discoveries.

In The Last Two Months I Have Been Very Busy With My Own Mathematical Speculations, Which Have Cost Me Much Time, Without My Having Reached My Original Goal. Again And Again I Was Enticed By The Frequently Interesting Prospects From One Direction To The Other, Sometimes Even By Will-o'-the-wisps, As Is Not Rare In Mathematic Speculations.

Does The Pursuit Of Truth Give You As Much Pleasure As Before? Surely It Is Not The Knowing But The Learning, Not The Possessing But The Acquiring, Not The Being-there But The Getting There That Afford The Greatest Satisfaction. If I Have Exhausted Something, I Leave It In Order To Go Again Into The Dark. Thus Is That Insatiable Man So Strange: When He Has Completed A Structure It Is Not In Order To Dwell In It Comfortably, But To Start Another.

The Higher Arithmetic Presents Us With An Inexhaustible Store Of Interesting Truths - Of Truths, Too, Which Are Not Isolated, But Stand In A Close Internal Connection, And Between Which, As Our Knowledge Increases, We Are Continually Discovering New And Sometimes Wholly Unexpected Ties.

To Such Idle Talk It Might Further Be Added: That Whenever A Certain Exclusive Occupation Is Coupled With Specific Shortcomings, It Is Likewise Almost Certainly Divorced From Certain Other Shortcomings.