With his height, Caleb looked over their heads toward his cousin and…his throat tightened. There in a yellow dress that emphasized the elegant line of her shoulders and a new hair cut that accentuated the shape of her face stood the most exquisite girl to have ever graced the Dodge Cove elite with her presence.

Elon Musk wins you over with his elegant mastery of engineering, be it for the rocket or the car. But what blew my socks off was when our conversation veered way off topic. We started musing about whether it was possible we all lived in the matrix, and Musk still had deep knowledge.

God is a pure mathematician!' declared British astronomer Sir James Jeans. The physical Universe does seem to be organised around elegant mathematical relationships. And one number above all others has exercised an enduring fascination for physicists: 137.0359991.... It is known as the fine-structure constant and is denoted by the Greek letter alpha (α).

“They said that [producer] Merv Griffin likes her in bright colors. I think they took one black dress, but the rest of them were bright colors. And they were looking for elegant, very feminine looks. You know she's a perfect size 4/6. No alterations needed. She really has an amazing figure.”

It was funny how the old practices always came around again. It was the rhythm of human enterprise to invent and worship some new approach, to fully reject it a generation later, to realize the need for it again a generation or two after that and then hastily reinvent it as new, usually without its original elegance. Scientists hated to look backward for anything.

“Hildegarde was perhaps the most famous supper-club entertainer who ever lived, ... I used to absorb all the things she was doing, all the showmanship she created. It was marvelous to watch her, wearing elegant gowns, surrounded with roses and playing with white gloves on. They used to literally roll out the red carpet for her.”

What the critic as a teacher of language tries to teach is not an elegant accomplishment, but the means of conscious life. Literary education should lead not merely to the admiration of great literature, but to some possession of its power of utterance. The ultimate aim is an ethical and participating aim, not an aesthetic or contemplative one, even though the latter may be the means of achieving the former.

Ember was watching me, green bright eyes in the shadows of the room. She crouched against the wall with her wings pressed close and her tail curled around herself. Even with her fangs slightly bared and her sides heaving with fear, she was still beautiful, elegant, fiery, everything my dragon wanted.

“It was funny how the old practices always came around again. It was the rhythm of human enterprise to invent and worship some new approach, to fully reject it a generation later, to realize the need for it again a generation or two after that and then hastily reinvent it as new, usually without its original elegance. Scientists hated to look backward for anything.”

That's because, if correct, a mathematical formula expresses an eternal truth about the universe. Hence no one can claim ownership of it; it is ours to share. Rich or poor, black or white, young or old - no one can take these formulas away from us. Nothing in this world is so profound and elegant, and yet so available to all.