Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations on Architecture

The architecture of a nation is great only when it is as universal and established as its language, and when provinncial differences are nothing more than so many dialects.
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

When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers.
Colleen Barrett (b.1944) American Businessperson

The terrifying and edible beauty of Art Nouveau architecture.
Salvador Dali (1904–89) Spanish Painter

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

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

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

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

Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity.
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American Architect

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

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 future of architecture does not lie so much in continuing to fill up the landscape as in bringing back life and order to our cities and towns.
Gottfried Bohm (1920–2021) German Architect, Sculptor

Nor aught availed him now to have built in heaven high towers; nor did he scrape by all his engines, but was headlong sent with his industrious crew to build in hell.
John Milton (1608–74) English Poet, Civil Servant, Scholar, Debater

Heredity is a strong factor, even in architecture. Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma.
E. B. White (1985–99) American Essayist, Humorist

Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions.
Coco Chanel (1883–1971) French Fashion Designer

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

True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism.
Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher

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

All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable.
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

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 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

Greek architecture is the flowering of geometry.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher

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

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

Architecture is frozen music.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet

The brevity of human life gives a melancholy to the profession of the architect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher

All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet

Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) German-born American Architect, Academic

Solitude is good company and my architecture is not for those who fear or shun it.
Luis Barragan (1902–88) Mexican Engineer, Architect

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