Rich men’s houses are seldom beautiful, rarely comfortable, and never original. It is a constant source of surprise to people of moderate means to observe how little a big fortune contributes to Beauty.
Margot Asquith (1864-1945) British socialite, author, wit [Emma Margaret Asquith, Countess Oxford and Asquith; Margot Oxford; née Tennant]
Autobiography, Vol. 2, 5 May 1908 (1922)
(Source)
Quotations about:
architecture
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
Architecture in general is frozen music.
Friedrich von Schelling (1775-1854) German philosopher
Philosophie der Kunst (1809)
Often attributed to Johann von Goethe, who used a similar description ("frozen music" or "petrified music") in an 1829 letter.
We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British statesman and author
Speech, House of Commons (28 Oct 1943)
(Source)
During the debate over rebuilding the House of Commons, which had been destroyed during a German bombing.
Architecture is inhabited sculpture.
(Other Authors and Sources)
Constantin Brâncuși (1876-1957) Romanian sculptor, painter, photographer
Quoted in Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Themes and Episodes (1966).
Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement: a sanded floor and whitewashed walls, and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside; or a grimy palace amid the smoke with a regiment of housemaids always working to smear the dirt together so that it may be unnoticed; which, think you, is the most refined, the most fit for a gentleman of those two dwellings?
William Morris (1834-1896) British textile designer, writer, socialist activist
“The Prospects of Architecture in Civilization,” speech, London (10 Mar 1880)
(Source)
I don’t go to church, but I always go to cathedrals.
Gough Whitlam (1916-2014) Australian statesman, Prime Minister (1972-75)
In the Sydney Morning Herald (29 Dec 1986)
I find I never weary of great churches. It is my favorite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral: a thing as single and specious as a statue at first glance, and yet, on examination, as lively and interesting as a forest in detail.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
An Inland Voyage, “Noyon Cathedral” (1878)
(Source)
The monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities have been decayed and demolished?
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientist, author, statesman
Essex’s Device (1595)
Landscaping is the great cardinal sin of modern architecture. It’s not your garden, it’s not a park — it’s a formless patch of grass, shrubbery and the occasional tree that exists purely to stop the original developer’s plans from looking like a howling concrete wilderness.
Ben Aaronovitch (b. 1964) British author
Broken Homes (2013)
Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Essay (1860), “Wealth,” The Conduct of Life, ch. 3
(Source)
Based on a course of lectures, "The Conduct of Life," delivered in Pittsburg (1851-03).
The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines — so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) American architect, interior designer, writer, educator [b. Frank Lincoln Wright]
“Frank Lloyd Wright Talks of His Art,” New York Times Magazine (1953-10-04)
(Source)
Don’t fight forces, use them.
Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) American architect, engineer
Shelter Magazine (Nov 1932)
The motto of Shelter magazine, when renamed and repurposed by Fuller in 1932 from Philadelphia's old T-Square Club Journal.
