I tell you (dogmatically, if you like to call it so, knowing it well) a square inch of man's engraving is worth all the photographs that were ever dipped in acid... Believe me, photography can do against line engraving just what Madame Tussaud's wax-work can do against sculpture. That and no more. (1865)

How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?

I cannot but think it an evil sign of a people when their houses are built to last for one generation only.

The time is probably near when a new system of architectural laws will be developed, adapted entirely to metallic construction.

No picture can be good which deceives by its imitation, for the very reason that nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided; but the men.

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