The Pleasure of Proof

For Sunday reflection, Bertrand Russell quoted in David Wells’ “The Penguin Book of Curious and Interesting Mathematics”:

“My friend G.H. Hardy, who was a professor of pure mathematics… told me once that if he could find proof that I was going to die in five minutes he would of course be sorry to lose me, but this sorrow would be quite outweighed by pleasure in the proof. I entirely sympathised with him and was not at all offended.”