We require from buildings, as from men, two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it; which last is itself another form of duty.
The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.
Taste is not only a part and index of morality, it is the only morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is "What do you like?" Tell me what you like, I'll tell you what you are.
Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.
Our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves what shall be true for the future.
He who can take no interest in what is small will take false interest in what is great.
The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.
When a man is wrapped up in himself he makes a pretty small package.
This is the true nature of home -- it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from injury, but from all terror, doubt and division.
There is nothing in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and he who considers price only is that man's lawful prey.