Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems. - René Descartes

I esteemed Eloquency highly, and was in raptures with poesy; but I thought that both were gifts of nature rather than fruits of study. Those in whom the faculty of Reason is predominant, and who most skillfully dispose their thoughts with a view to render them clear and intelligible, are always the best able to persuade others of the truth of what they lay down, though they should speak only in the language of Lower Brittany, and be wholly ignorant of the rules of Rhetoric; and those whose minds are stored with the most agreeable fancies, and who can give expression to them with the greatest embellishment and harmony, are still the best poets, though unacquainted with the Art of Poetry.

it appears to me that I have discovered many truths more useful and more important than all I had before learned, or even had expected to learn.

was most keen on mathematics, because of its certainty and the incontrovertibility* of its proofs; but I did not yet see its true use. Believing as I did that its only application was to the mechanical arts,* I was astonished that nothing more exalted had been built on such sure and solid foundations; whereas, on the other hand, I compared the moral works of ancient pagan writers to splendid and magnificent palaces built on nothing more than sand and mud.