He had a special feeling for what he called the “correct miscalculation,” for he believed that mistakes were often as revealing as the right answers. This gave us confidence even when our best efforts came to nothing.

Yoko Ogawa, The Housekeeper and the Professor: A Novel

Hermetic quote Ogawa Professor mistakes

Consider also:

  1. I Am Legend
  2. “the fact was that she’d fallen back into a life of crime without meaning to—and the worst sort of crime, at that: the low-paying kind.”
  3. “It’s all math to you, isn’t it?” “Everything is math, Brittle. All of existence is binary. Ones and zeros. On and off. Existing or not. Believing anything beyond that is simply pretending.” “That’s all anything means to you?” “Meaning is a function set to zero in this universe. Maybe in the other places beyond us there is something more than simply maintaining existence, but here, in this universe, it is the only thing that matters.”
  4. The White People and Other Stories
  5. “C. Agrippa here adds the following instructions, copied from Boethius:—’The guides on the road to perfection are Faith, Hope, and Charity, and the means to attain this object are Purity, Temperance, Self-control, Chastity, Tranquility of Mind, Contemplation, Adoration (Ecstasy), Aspiration, and Virtue.'”