A Mathematician’s Apology

by G.H. Hardy

What we do may be small, but it has a certain character of permanence; and to have produced anything of the slightest permanent interest, whether it be a copy of verses or a geometrical theorem, is to have done some- thing utterly beyond the powers of the vast majority of men.

‘it is the large generalization, limited by a happy particularity, which is the fruitful conception12