Sophie Germain proved to the world that even a woman can accomplish something in the most rigorous and abstract of sciences and for that reason would well have deserved an honorary degree.

By explanation the scientist understands nothing except the reduction to the least and simplest basic laws possible, beyond which he cannot go, but must plainly demand them; from them however he deduces the phenomena absolutely completely as necessary.

It is always noteworthy that all those who seriously study this science [the theory of numbers] conceive a sort of passion for it.

Ask her to wait a moment - I am almost done.

I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.

The enchanting charms of this sublime science reveal only to those who have the courage to go deeply into it.

Sin² φ is odious to me, even though Laplace made use of it; should it be feared that sin² φ might become ambiguous, which would perhaps never occur, or at most very rarely when speaking of sin(φ²), well then, let us write (sin φ)², but not sin² φ, which by analogy should signify sin (sin φ)