Concerning no subject would [George Bernard] Shaw be deterred by the minor accident of total ignorance from penning a definitive opinion.

Were we to aim in every case at the kind of supreme beauty exemplified by Sta Maria della Salute, we should end with aesthetic overload. The clamorous masterpieces, jostling for attention side by side, would lose their distinctiveness, and the beauty of each of them would be at war with the beauty of the rest.

There is a deep human need for beauty and if you ignore that need in architecture your buildings will not last

Classical buildings endure because they are loved, admired and accepted, and enjoy an innate adaption to human needs and purposes.

There are no chords in modernist architecture, only lines - lines that may come to an end, but that achieve no closure

Being unpopular is never easy; but being unpopular in a good cause is a shield against despair.

To speak of beauty is to enter another and more exalted realm-a realm sufficiently apart from our everyday concerns as to be mentioned only with a certain hesitation. People who are always in praise and pursuit of the beautiful are an embarrassment, like people who make a constant display of their religious faith. Somehow, we feel such things should be kept for our exalted moments, and not paraded in company, or allowed to spill out over dinner.