Famous Architecture Quotes

A man who could build a church, as one may say, by squinting at a sheet of paper.
-- Charles Dickens

Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest of all the arts.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

An arch never sleeps.
-- James Fergusson

And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither: so that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building.
-- Bible

Anon, out of the earth a fabric huge Rose, like an exhalation.
-- John Milton

Architecture is frozen music.
-- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Architecture is the art of how to waste space.
-- Philip Johnson

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon As best gem upon her zone.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; . . .
-- Bible

Grandeur . . . consists in form, and not in size: and to the eye of the philosopher, the curve drawn on a paper two inches long, is just as magnificent, just as symbolic of divine mysteries and melodies, as when embodied in the span of some cathedral roof.
-- Charles Kingsley

Houses are built to live in, not to look on; therefore, let use be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had.
-- Francis Bacon

In the elder days of Art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part; For the gods see everywhere.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

No hammers fell, no ponderous axes rung, Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung. Majestic silence.
-- Bishop Reginald Heber

Nor did there want Cornice or frieze with bossy sculpture graven.
-- John Milton

Old houses mended, Cost little less than new, before they're ended.
-- Colley Cibber

Rich windows that exclude the light, And passages that lead to nothing.
-- Thomas Gray

Silently as a dream the fabric rose; No sound of hammer or of saw was there.
-- William Cowper

The architect Built his great heart into these sculptured stones, And with him toiled his children, and their lives Were builded, with his own, into the walls, As offerings unto God.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man. The mountain of granite blooms into an eternal flower, with the lightness and delicate finish, as well as the aerial proportions and perspective of vegetable beauty.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The hand that rounded Peter's dome And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew; The conscious stone to beauty grew.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson