A Quote by David Eugene Smith

What, after all, is mathematics but the poetry of the mind, and what is poetry but the mathematics of the heart?

David Eugene Smith

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After Heart Mathematics Mind Poetry What Is Poetry

Quote Author

David Eugene Smith
January 21, 1860 - July 29, 1944

I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics, and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation.

Robert Morgan

Mathematics may, like poetry or music, "promote and sustain a lofty habit of mind."

G. H. Hardy

There is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics. It is every bit as mind blowing as cosmology or physics (mathematicians conceived of black holes long before astronomers actually found any), and allows more freedom of expression than poetry, art, or music (which depends heavily on properties of the physical universe). Mathematics is the purest of the arts, as well as the most misunderstood.

Paul Lockhart

Mystery is an inescapable ingredient of mathematics. Mathematics is full of unanswered questions, which far outnumber known theorems and results. It's the nature of mathematics to pose more problems than it can solve. Indeed, mathematics itself may be built on small islands of truth comprising the pieces of mathematics that can be validated by relatively short proofs. All else is speculation.

Ivars Peterson

Poetry was syllable and rhythm. Poetry was the measurement of breath. Poetry was time make audible. Poetry evoked the present moment; poetry was the antidote to history. Poetry was language free from habit.

Damon Galgut

One cannot inquire into the foundations and nature of mathematics without delving into the question of the operations by which the mathematical activity of the mind is conducted. If one failed to take that into account, then one would be left studying only the language in which mathematics is represented rather than the essence of mathematics.

L. E. J. Brouwer

May not music be described as the mathematics of the sense, mathematics as music of the reason? The musician feels mathematics, the mathematician thinks music: music the dream, mathematics the working life.

James Joseph Sylvester

Poetry is the mathematics of writing and closely kin to music.

John Steinbeck

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Albert Einstein

I like science and mathematics. When I say mathematics, I don't mean algebra or math in that sense, but the mathematics of things.

Gza

The true spirit of delight...is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

Bertrand Russell

Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words.

Tahar Ben Jelloun

Poetry, my dear friends, is a sacred incarnation of a smile. Poetry is a sigh that dries the tears. Poetry is a spirit who dwells in the soul, whose nourishment is the heart, whose wine is affection. Poetry that comes not in this form is a false messiah.

Khalil Gibran

But there is another reason for the high repute of mathematics: it is mathematics that offers the exact natural sciences a certain measure of security which, without mathematics, they could not attain.

Albert Einstein

We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.