The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.

The true grotesque being the expression of the repose or play of a serious mind, there is a false grotesque opposed to it, which is the result of the full exertion of a frivolous one.

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

Along the iron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the fiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every hour. All vitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the central cities; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds on the city gates.

If the thing is impossible, you need not trouble yourselves about it; if possible, try for it.

Architecture is the work of nations

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.