Quotes from D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

The harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty.

numerical precision is the very soul of science, and its attainment affords the best, perhaps the only criterion of the truth of theories and the correctness of experiments.

Everything is what it is because it got that way.

This is a great theme. Boltzmann, writing in 1886 on the second law of thermodynamics, declared that available energy was the main object at stake in the struggle for existence and the evolution of the world.

The harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty.

It is success that colours all in life, Success makes fools admir'd, makes villains honest.

The perfection of mathematical beauty is such...that whatsoever is most beautiful and regular is also found to be most useful and excellent.