I know, indeed, and can conceive of no pursuit so antagonistic to the cultivation of the oratorical faculty... as the study of Mathematics. An eloquent mathematician must, from the nature of things, ever remain as rare a phenomenon as a talking fish, and it is certain that the more anyone gives himself up to the study of oratorical effect the less will he find himself in a fit state to mathematicize.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (ed. 2008)