"Taste is not only a part and index of morality, it is the only morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is "What do you like?" Tell me what you like, I'll tell you what you are."

To watch the corn grow, and the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over ploughshare or spade; to read, to think, to love, to hope, to pray, — these are the things that make men happy.

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

Architecture ... the adaptation of form to resist force.

Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities.

Civilization is the making of civil persons.

They are good furniture pictures, unworthy of praise, and undeserving of blame.