You cannot have good architecture merely by asking people's advice on occasion. All good architecture is the expression of national life and character; and it is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for beauty.

It is perhaps the principal admirableness of the Gothic schools of architecture, that they receive the results of the labour of inferior minds; and out of fragments full of imperfectionraise up a stately and unaccusable whole.

The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.

Of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave.

Modern travelling is not travelling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.

Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.

See that your children be taught, not only the labors of the earth, but the loveliness of it.