"When we have overcome these difficulties, and successfully bridged over the gulph between the abstract and the concrete... we have acquired the rudiment of a permanent mental endowment. When, by a repetition of efforts of this kind, we have more fully developed the scientific faculty, the exercise of this faculty in detecting scientific principles in nature, and in directing practice by theory, is no longer irksome, but becomes an unfailing source of enjoyment, to which we return so often, that at last even our careless thoughts begin to run in a scientific channel."
January 1, 1970
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Scientific_Papers_of_James_Clerk_Maxwell