All the more I study Nature do I revere God, because Nature is all the body of God we will ever know.

Imitation is always insult--not flattery.

Take nothing for granted as beautiful or ugly, but take every building to pieces, and challenge every feature. Learn to distinguish the curious from the beautiful. Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind. 'Think simples' as my old master used to say - meaning to reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles.

Architecture is the frame of human existence. We must dedicate this existence more to beauty. For if poetic principle has deserted us, how long are we going to last?

To know what to leave out and what to put in; just where and just how, ah, that is to have been educated in knowledge of simplicity.

Beautiful buildings are more than scientific. They are true organisms, spiritually conceived; works of art, using the best technology by inspiration rather than the idiosyncrasies of mere taste or any averaging by the committee mind.

San Francisco is the only city I can think of that can survive all the things you people are doing to it and still look beautiful.