I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to last, and built to be lovely; as rich and full of pleasantness as may be within and without: . . . with such differences as might suit and express each man's character and occupation, and partly his history.

Of all God's gifts to the sighted man, color is holiest, the most divine, the most solemn.

An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.

Compulsory education... It is a painful, continual, and difficult work; to be done by kindness, by watching, by warning, by precept, and by praise, — but above all — by example.

Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth.

All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.

If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.