When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought is incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.

We may, without offending any laws of good taste, require of an architect, as we do of a novelist, that he should be not only correct, but entertaining.

To be taught to read—what is the use of that, if you know not whether what you read is false or true? To be taught to write or to speak—but what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think—nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, and both true.

All great art is the expression of man's delight in God's work, not his own.

Obey something, and you will have a chance to learn what is best to obey. But if you begin by obeying nothing, you will end by obeying the devil and all his invited friends.

The power of association is stronger than the power of beauty; therefore, the power of association is the power of beauty.

Value is the life-giving power of anything; cost, the quantity of labour required to produce it; its price, the quantity of labourwhich its possessor will take in exchange for it.