"The first duty of a state is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed and educated till it attains years of discretion."

"Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery."

"Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons."

"Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning."

"Cheerfulness is as natural to the heart of man in strong health as color to his cheek and wherever there is habitual gloom there must be either bad air unwholesome food improperly severe labor or erring habits of life."

"If a book is worth reading it is worth buying."

"When men are rightly occupied their amusement grows out of their work as the color-petals out of a fruitful flower."

"Let us then understand at once that change or variety is as much a necessity to the human heart and brain in buildings as in books; that there is no merit, though there is some occasional use, in monotony; and that we must no more expect to derive either pleasure or profit from an architecture whose ornaments are of one pattern, and whose pillars are of one proportion, than we should of a universe in which the clouds were all of one shape, and the trees all of one shape."

"A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it."

"So far, therefore, as the science of exchange relates to the advantage of one of the exchanging persons only, it is founded on the ignorance or incapacity of the opposite person. . . . It is therefore a science founded on nescience. . . . This science, alone of sciences, must, by all available means, promulgate and prolong its opposite nescience. . . . It is therefore peculiarly and alone science of darkness."

"He who has truth at his heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue."

"It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends."

"No person who is well bred, kind and modest is ever offensively plain; all real deformity means want for manners or of heart."

"All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul."

"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."

"Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them."

"A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money."

"Modern travelling is not travelling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel."

"All art is but dirtying the paper delicately."

"Man's only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him. Reverence something to be worshipped by him, and love something to be cherished by him, forever."

"Civilization is the making of civil persons."

"Men don't and can't live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don't live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of laborers Unions."

"We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it."

"The sky is the part of creation in which nature has done for the sake of pleasing man."

"The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world... to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one."

"No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases."

"Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close."

"One of the major obstacles impeding any positive future change in our lives is that we are too busy with our current work or activity. Levi quit his tax-work, Peter stopped fishing at lake, Paul ceased being a priest. They all left their jobs because they thought it was necessary."

"Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance."

"The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education."

"Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light."

"The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him."

"Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor."

"Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty."

"Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities."

"God gives us always strength enough and sense enough for everything He wants us to do."

"Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation."

"I know well that happiness is in little things."

"To speak and act truth with constancy and precision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps as meretorious, as to speak it under intimidation or penalty."

"Do not think of your faults, still less of other's faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes."

"All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time."

"Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it."

"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."

"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."

"Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art."

"To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education."

"The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it."

"What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do."

"It is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, can never be recalled."

"A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort."