Quote 7 of 9

From A Mathematician's Apology, by G.H. Hardy

A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns.
If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because theirs
are made with ideas.  A painter makes patterns with shapes
and colours, a poet with words.  A painting may embody an "idea", but
the idea is usually commonplace and unimportant.  In poetry, ideas
count for a good deal more; but, as Housman insisted, the importance
of ideas in poetry is habitually exaggerated: "I cannot satisfy myself
that there are any such things as poetical ideas...  Poetry is not the
thing said but a way of saying it."

  Not all the water in the rough rude sea
  Can wash the balm from an anointed King
  
Could any lines be better, and could ideas be at once more trite and
more false?
		-- Part 10, p. 84

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