Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
God leaves to Man the choice of Forms in Government; and those who constitute one Form, may abrogate it.
The Japanese put houses in among the trees and allowed nature to gain the ascendancy in any composition.
The Industrial Revolution was another of those extraordinary jumps forward in the story of civilization.
The interior of the house personifies the private world; the exterior of it is part of the outside world.
Everyone sees they cannot well live asunder, nor many together, without some rule to which all must submit.
In cities like Athens, poor houses lined narrow and tortuous streets in spite of luxurious public buildings.
The corridor is hardly ever found in small houses, apart from the verandah, which also serves as a corridor.
The ancient Greeks noticed that a man with arms and legs extended described a circle, with his navel as the center.
The English light is so very subtle, so very soft and misty, that the architecture responded with great delicacy of detail.
Stonehenge was built possibly by the Minoans. It presents one of man's first attempts to order his view of the outside world.
If vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established.
Tis hard to comprehend how one man can come to be master of many, equal to himself in right, unless it be by consent or by force.
The Egyptian tomb was the outcome of the Mesopotamian influence and followed from the religious crisis the country had undergone.
[I]f vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established.
'Tis hard to comprehend how one man can come to be master of many, equal to himself in right, unless it be by consent or by force.
The medieval hall house was very primitive when it became the characteristic form of dwelling of the landowner of the Middle Ages.
Laws and constitutions ought to be weighed... to constitute that which is most conducing to the establishment of justice and liberty.
In the crowded and difficult conditions of a steep hillside, houses have had to struggle to establish their territory and to survive.
The center of Western culture is Greece, and we have never lost our ties with the architectural concepts of that ancient civilization.
Like flats of today, terraces of houses gained a certain anonymity from identical facades following identical floor plans and heights.
The exterior cannot do without the interior since it is from this, as from life, that it derives much of its inspiration and character.
The American order reveals a method that was largely the outcome of material necessity, as exemplified by the Colonial style and the grid.
In the Scottish Orkneys, the little stone houses with their single large room and central hearth had an extraordinary range of built-in furniture.
French architecture always manages to combine the most magnificent underlying themes of architecture; like Roman design, it looks to the community.
In the East there is a gap between the top of a wall and underside of a roof; it acts as a screen, and the Chinese were able to use it as they wished.
This submission is a restraint of liberty, but could be of no effect as to the good intended, unless it were general; nor general, unless it were natural.
I will believe in the right of one man to govern a nation despotically when I find a man born unto the world with boots and spurs, and a nation with saddles on their backs.
A general presumption that Icings will govern well, is not a sufficient security to the People... those who subjected themselves to the will of a man were governed by a beast.
Many things are unknown to the wisest, and the best men can never wholly divest themselves of passions and affections... nothing can or ought to be permanent but that which is perfect.
In the East there is a gap between the top of the wall and the underside of the roof; the wall does not act as a support. Instead, it acts as a screen, and the Chinese were able to use it as they wished.
If the public safety be provided, liberty and propriety secured, justice administered, virtue encouraged, vice suppressed, and the true interest of the nation advanced, the ends of government are accomplished . . .
There may be a hundred thousand men in an army, who are all equally free; but they only are naturally most fit to be commanders or leaders, who most excel in the virtues required for the right performance of those offices.
Fruits are always of the same nature with the seeds and roots from which they come, and trees are known by the fruits they bear: as a man begets a man, and a beast a beast, that society of men which constitutes a government upon the foundation of justice.
The only ends for which governments are constituted, and obedience rendered to them, are the obtaining of and protection; and they who cannot provide for both give the people a right of taking such ways as best please themselves, in order to their own safety.
Such as have reason, understanding, or common sense, will, and ought to make use of it in those things that concern themselves and their posterity, and suspect the words of such as are interested in deceiving or persuading them not to see with their own eyes.
And so, inevitably, one returns to the centre of Western culture, Greece, and we have never, in any sense, lost our ties with the architectural concepts that this country's ancient civilization explored and demonstrated, nor with the political and social freedom that lay behind them.
Nay, all laws must fall, human societies that subsist by them be dissolved, and all innocent persons be exposed to the violence of the most wicked, if men might not justly defend themselves against injustice by their own natural right, when the ways prescribed by publick authority cannot be taken.
Newton, for instance, attempted to comprehend the diversities of the universe with a single system of mathematical laws, the objectivity, sobriety and logic of Palladian architecture presented an aesthetic formula which, while accepting variations and adjustments according to climate and other needs, could be applied universally.
[A]ll popular and well-mixed governments [republics] . . . are ever established by wise and good men, and can never be upheld otherwise than by virtue: The worst men always conspiring against them, they must fall, if the best have not power to preserve them. . . . [and] unless they be preserved in a great measure free from vices . . . .
Fruits are always of the same nature with the seeds and roots from which they come, and trees are known by the fruits they bear: as a man begets a man, and a beast a beast, that society of men which constitutes a government upon the foundation of justice, virtue, and the common good, will always have men to promote those ends; and that which intends the advancement of one man's desire and vanity, will abound in those that will foment them.
We cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, right from wrong, or know what obedience we owe to the magistrate, or what we may justly expect from him, unless we know what he is, why he is, and by whom he is made to be what he is.... I cannot know how to obey unless I know in what, and to whom; nor in what unless I know what ought to be commanded; nor what ought to be commanded unless I understand the original right of the commander, which is the great arcanum.
Machiavel, discoursing on these matters, finds virtue to be so essentially necessary to the establishment and preservation of liberty, that he thinks it impossible for a corrupted people to set up a good government, or for a tyranny to be introduced if they be virtuous; and makes this conclusion, 'That where the matter (that is, the body of the people) is not corrupted, tumults and disorders do not hurt; and where it is corrupted, good laws do no good:' which being confirmed by reason and experience, I think no wise man has ever contradicted him.