The brevity of human life gives a melancholy to the profession of the architect.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
Believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
If cities were built by the sound of music, then some edifices would appear to be constructed by grave, solemn tones, and others to have danced forth to light fantastic airs.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines—so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American Architect
A man of eighty has outlived probably three new schools of painting, two of architecture and poetry and a hundred in dress.
—Joyce Cary (1888–1957) English Novelist, Artist
A structure becomes architectural, and not sculptural, when its elements no longer have their justification in nature.
—Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) Italian-born French Poet, Playwright
Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul.
—Louis Kahn (1901–74) American Architect
Life is really simple, but men insist on making it complicated.
—Confucius (551–479 BCE) Chinese Philosopher
A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern world, like impressionism in painting. Surely it is obviously because we have not enough dogmas; we cannot bear to see anything in the sky that is solid and enduring, anything in the sky that does not change like the clouds of the sky.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
I call architecture petrified music. Really there is something in this: The tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Solitude is good company and my architecture is not for those who fear or shun it.
—Luis Barragan (1902–88) Mexican Engineer, Architect
Architecture is the alphabet of giants; it is the largest set of symbols ever made to meet the eyes of men. A tower stands up like a sort of simplified stature, of much more than heroic size.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
Don’t fight forces, use them.
—Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American Inventor, Philosopher
A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous.
—Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) German-born American Architect, Academic
Le Corbusier was the sort of relentlessly rational intellectual that only France loves wholeheartedly, the logician who flies higher and higher in ever-decreasing circles until, with one last, utterly inevitable induction, he disappears up his own fundamental aperture and emerges in the fourth dimension as a needle-thin umber bird.
—Thomas Wolfe (1900–38) American Novelist
Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.
—Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) German-born American Architect, Academic
The architect represents neither a Dionysian nor an Apollinian condition: here it is the mighty act of will, the will which moves mountains, the intoxication of the strong will, which demands artistic expression. The most powerful men have always inspired the architects; the architect has always been influenced by power.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Light, God’s eldest daughter, is a principal beauty in a building.
—Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian
Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions.
—Coco Chanel (1883–1971) French Fashion Designer
Oh Rat’s
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American Architect
Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.
—Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) German-born American Architect, Academic
An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, See! this our fathers did for us.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
A great architect is not made by way of a brain nearly so much as he is made by way of a cultivated, enriched heart.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American Architect
Architecture is frozen music.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American Architect
The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American Architect
Houses are built to live in, more than to look on; therefore let use be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher