Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know in life.

The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.

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

In one point of view, Gothic is not only the best, but the only rational architecture, as being that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble.

The truths of nature are one eternal change, one infinite variety. There is no bush on the face of the globe exactly like another bush; there are no two trees in the forest whose boughs bend into the same network, nor two leaves on the same tree which could not be told one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike.

The greatest reward is not what we receive for our labor, but what we become by it.

No architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.