Quote#Work
Finally, a few days ago, it has been achieved - but not by my…
Quote byCarl Friedrich Gauss · 1777–1855
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: In a letter to Wilhelm Olbers (September 3, 1805). Translation from The Shaping of Arithmetic after C.F. Gauss's Disquisitiones Arithmeticae (2007) by Catherine Goldstein, Norbert Schappacher, Joachim Schwermer (Eds.) p. 507..
English (original)
Finally, a few days ago, it has been achieved - but not by my cumbersome search, rather through God’s good grace, I am tempted to say. As the lightning strikes the riddle was solved; I myself would be unable to point to a guiding thread between what I knew before, what I had used in my last attempts, and what made it work.
— Carl Friedrich Gauss
More from Carl Friedrich Gauss
The centre and the radius of this auxiliary sphere are here quite arbitrary.
It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.
In researches in which an infinity of directions of straight lines in space is concerned, it is advantageous to represent these directions by means of those points upon a fixed sphere
But in our opinion truths of this kind should be drawn from notions rather than from notations.
The enchanting charms of this sublime science reveal themselves in all their beauty only to those who have the courage to go deeply into it.
Spherical trigonometry and certain other theorems, to which the author has added a new one of frequent application, then serve for the solution of the problems which the comparison of the various directions involved can present.