If we evolved a race of Isaac Newtons, that would not be progress. For the price that Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he was incapable of friendship, love, fatherhood, and many other desirable things. As a man we was a failure, as a monster he was superb.

-Aldous Huxley

Will they not seek the quadrature of the circle, even when on their wives?

-Michel de Montaigne

I saw that argument was useless and said no more; there is no use arguing with a man who can multiply anything by the square root of minus one.

-Carson Napier in "Pirates of Venus" by Edgar Rice Burroughs

I  attempted to place myself by her side: she withdrew to a sofa, rose from it the next moment, and fanning herself as she walked about the chamber, said to me in a reserved and disdainful tone of voice, "Zanetto, 'lascia le donne, a studia la matematica."--[Leave women and study mathematics.]

-Jean-Jacques Rousseau from Confessions