Just go on . . . and faith will soon return. To a friend hesitant with respect to infinitesimals.

To someone who could grasp the Universe from a unified standpoint the entire creation would appear as a unique truth and necessity.

The more wit we have, the less satisfied we are with it.

I am worn out by the insults and vexations that this work brings down on us.

Thus metaphysics and mathematics are, among all the sciences that belong to reason, those in which imagination has the greatest role. I beg pardon of those delicate spirits who are detractors of mathematics for saying this . . . . The imagination in a mathematician who creates makes no less difference than in a poet who invents. . . . Of all the great men of antiquity, Archimedes may be the one who most deserves to be placed beside Homer.

Push on and faith will catch up with you.

In England it was enough that Newton was the greatest mathematican of his century; in France he would have been expected to be agreeable too.