If the design of the building be originally bad, the only virtue it can ever possess will be signs of antiquity.

Ornamentation is the principal part of architecture, considered as a subject of fine art.

To use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own, and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.

That which is required in order to the attainment of accurate conclusions respecting the essence of the Beautiful is nothing morethan earnest, loving, and unselfish attention to our impressions of it.

There is no climate, no place, and scarcely an hour, in which nature does not exhibit color which no mortal effort can imitate or approach. For all our artificial pigments are, even when seen under the same circumstances, dead and lightless beside her living color; nature exhibits her hues under an intensity of sunlight which trebles their brilliancy.

That which seems to be wealth may in verity be only the gilded index of far reaching ruin

Do not think it wasted time to submit yourselves to any influence which may bring upon you any noble feeling.