Do not make things easy for yourself by speaking or thinking of data as if they were different from what they are; and do not go off from facing data as they are, to amuse your imagination by wishing they were different from what they are. Such wishing is pure waste of nerve force, weakens your intellectual power, and gets you into habits of mental confusion.

Mary Everest Boole, in “Philosophy and Fun of Algebra” (1909)
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13447