One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.
The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.
Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them.
When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.
I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting.
Nearly all the powerful people of this age are unbelievers, the best of them in doubt and misery, the most in plodding hesitation, doing as well as they can, what practical work lies at hand.
The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don't mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.
Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.
The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.
Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.
No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.
No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.
Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.
It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.
Men cannot not live by exchanging articles, but producing them. They live by work not trade.
Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.
No lying knight or lying priest ever prospered in any age, but especially not in the dark ones. Men prospered then only in following an openly declared purpose, and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds.
Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.
Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.
In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.
Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
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.
All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.
It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately.
The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this; was it done with enjoyment, was the carver happy while he was about it?
There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves.
Whether for life or death, do your own work well.
Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.
Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.
The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.
He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.
All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.
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.
Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.
The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.
