C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Mathematics
Mathematics may be briefly defined as the science of quantities, and is one of the most important of disciplining studies which engage the practical student.
Mathematics has not a foot to stand upon which is not purely metaphysical.
Mathematics are the most abstracted of knowledge.
He that gives a portion of his time and talent to the investigation of mathematical truth will come to all other questions with a decided advantage.
The mathematics are friends of religion, inasmuch as they charm the passions, restrain the impetuosity of imagination, and purge the mind from error and prejudice.
As an exercise of the reasoning faculties, pure mathematics is an admirable exercise, because it consists of reasoning alone, and does not encumber the student with any exercise of judgment.
The study of the properties of numbers, Plato tells us, habituates the mind to the contemplation of pure truth, and raises us above the material universe. He would have his disciples apply themselves to this study, not that they may be able to buy or sell, not that they may qualify themselves to be shopkeepers or travelling merchants, but that they may learn to withdraw their minds from the ever-shifting spectacle of this visible and tangible world, and to fix them on the immutable essences of things.