'Why should I not tell you, as well as all the world, the fresh and wonderful field of thought which they have opened to me in a few short hours ?' 'What then ?' asked Hypatia, smiling, as if she knew what the answer would be.

'In what does my commentary differ from the original text of Apollonius, on which I have so faithfully based it ?' 'Oh, as much as a living body differs from a dead one.

Instead of mere dry disquisitions on the properties of lines and curves, I found a mine of poetry and theology.

Every dull mathematical formula seemed transfigured, as if by a miracle, into the symbol of some deep and noble principle of the unseen world.' 'And do you think that he of Perga did not see as much?
or that we can pretend to surpass, in depth of insight, the sages of the elder world?
Be sure that they, like the poets, meant only spiritual things, even when they seem to talk only of physical ones, and concealed heaven under an earthly garb, only to hide it from the eyes of the profane; while we, in these degenerate days, must interpret and display each detail to the dull ears of men.' 'Do you think, my young friend,' asked Theon, 'that mathematics can be valuable to the philosopher otherwise than as vehicles of spiritual truth?
Are we to study numbers merely that we may be able to keep accounts; or as Pythagoras did, in order to deduce from their laws the ideas by which the universe, man, Divinity itself, consists ?' 'That seems to me certainly to be the nobler purpose.' 'Or conic sections, that we may know better how to construct machinery; or rather to devise from them symbols of the relations of Deity to its various emanations ?' 'You use your dialectic like Socrates himself, my father,' said Hypatia.
'If I do, it is only for a temporary purpose.

I should be sorry to accustom Philammon to suppose that the essence of philosophy was to be found in those minute investigations of words and analyses of notions, which seem to constitute Plato's chief power in the eyes of those who, like the Christian sophist Augustine, worship his letter while they neglect his spirit; not seeing that those dialogues, which they fancy the shrine itself, are but vestibules--' 'Say rather, veils, father.' 'Veils, indeed, which were intended to baffle the rude gaze of the carnal-minded; but still vestibules, through which the enlightened soul might be led up to the inner sanctuary, to the Hesperid gardens and golden fruit of the Timaeus and the oracles....