Ask her to wait a moment. I am almost done.
When told, while working, that his wife was dying.

For three days now this angel, almost too heavenly for earth has been my fiancée … Life stands before me like an eternal spring with new and brilliant colours. Upon his engagement to Johanne Osthof of Brunswick; they married 9 Oct 1805.

I have the vagary of taking a lively interest in mathematical subjects only where I may anticipate ingenious association of ideas and results recommending themselves by elegance or generality.

It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again; the never-satisfied man is so strange if he has completed a structure, then it is not in order to dwell in it peacefully,but in order to begin another. I imagine the world conqueror must feel thus, who, after one kingdom is scarcely conquered, stretches out his arms for others.

With a thousand joys I would accept a nonacademic job for which industriousness, accuracy, loyalty, and such are sufficient without specialized knowledge, and which would give a comfortable living and sufficient leisure, in order to sacrifice to my gods [mathematical research]. For example, I hope to get the editting of the census, the birth and death lists in local districts, not as a job, but for my pleasure and satisfaction...