However good you may be you have faults; however dull you may be you can find out what some of them are, and however slight they may be you had better make some - not too painful, but patient efforts to get rid of them.

Conceit may puff a man up, but never prop him up.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

... A power of obtaining veracity in the representation of material and tangible things, which, within certain limits and conditions, is unimpeachable, has now been placed in the hands of all men, almost without labour. (1853)

No one can ask honestly or hopefully to be delivered from temptation unless he has himself honestly and firmly determined to do the best he can to keep out of it.

Architecture concerns itself only with those characters of an edifice which are above and beyond its common use.