Top 223 Quotes & Sayings by Frank Lloyd Wright - Page 2

Respect the masterpiece. It is true reverence to man. There is no quality so great, none so much needed now.

As we live and as we are, Simplicity - with a capital "S" - is difficult to comprehend nowadays. We are no longer truly simple. We no longer live in simple terms or places. Life is a more complex struggle now. It is now valiant to be simple: a courageous thing to even want to be simple. It is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means.

Youth is a circumstance you can't do anything about. The trick is to grow up without getting old.

Each material has its own message.

Space. The continual becoming: invisible fountain from which all rhythms flow and to which they must pass. Beyond time or infinity

The best friend on earth of man is the tree: When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest resources of the earth.

A building should appear to grow easily from its site and be shaped to harmonize with its surroundings if Nature is manifest there.

Beautiful buildings are more than scientific. They are true organisms, spiritually conceived; works of art, using the best technology by inspiration rather than the idiosyncrasies of mere taste or any averaging by the committee mind.

We should learn from the snail: it has devised a home that is both exquisite and functional.

The best thing to do is go as far out as you can get... what you regard as 'too far' - and when others follow, as they will, move on

Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions.

Bring out the nature of the materials. Let their nature intimately into your scheme.

You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledge hammer on the construction site.

If you foolishly ignore beauty, then you will soon find yourself without it.

"I don't know whether you are a saint or a fool" said my lawyer. I replied "Is there a difference?"

The human race built most nobly when limitations were greatest.

Simplicity and Repose are qualities that measure the true value of any work of art.

Building becomes architecture only when the mind of man consciously takes it and tries with all his resources to make it beautiful, to put concordance, sympathy with nature, and all that into it. Then you have architecture.

An expert is a man who has stopped thinking. Why should he think? He is an expert.

Nature is all the body of God we mortals will ever see.

Human beings can be beautiful. If they are not beautiful it is entirely their own fault. It is what they do to themselves that makes them ugly. The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it.

The outside of any building may now come inside and the inside go outside, each seems as part of the other. Continuity, plasticity, and all the new simplicity the imply have at last come home.

Art is a discovery and development of elementary principles of nature into beautiful forms suitable for human use.

You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having.

A professional is one who does his best work when he feels the least like working.

We create our buildings and then they create us. Likewise, we construct our circle of friends and our communities and then they construct us.

I attend the greatest of all Churches. I put a capital N on Nature, and call it my Church.

If you wisely invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

More and more, so it seems to me, light is the beautifier of the building.

If capitalism is fair then unionism must be. If men and women have a right to capitalize their ideas and the resources of their country, then that implies the right of men and women to capitalize their labor.

I never design a building before I've seen the site and met the people who will be using it.

Architecture is life, or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today or ever will be lived.

The measure of a man's culture is the measure of his appreciation. We are ourselves what we appreciate and no more.

Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession of his own earth

Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession of his own Earth. It is at least the geometric pattern of things, of life, of the human and social world. It is at best that magic framework of reality that we sometimes touch upon when we use the word order.

You can't make an architect. But you can open the doors and windows toward the light as you see it.

I prefer honest arrogance to hypocritical modesty.

Good taste is not a substitute for knowledge

How many understand that Nature is the essential character of whatever is. It's something you'll find by looking not at, but in, always in. It's always inside the thing, and it makes the outside. And some day, when you get sufficiently proficient in understanding the use of the term, you can tell by the outside pretty much from what's inside.

The only thing wrong with architecture is architects.

A civilization is only a way of life. A culture is the way of making that way of life beautiful. So culture is your office here in America, and as no stream can rise higher than its source, so you can give no more or better to architecture than you are. So why not go to work on yourselves, to make yourselves, in quality, what you would have your buildings be?

Science can give us only the tools in the box, these mechanical miracles that it has already given us. But of what use to us are miraculous tools until we have mastered the humane, cultural use of them? We do not want to live in a world where the machine has mastered the man; we want to live in a world where man has mastered the machine.

Dining is and always was a great artistic opportunity.

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.

A building is not just a place to be but a way to be.

When we come to understand architecture as the essential nature of all harmonious structure we will see that it is the architecture of music that inspired Bach and Beethoven, the architecture of painting that is inspiring Picasso as it inspired Velasquez, that it is the architecture of life itself that is the inspiration of the great poets and philosophers.

It's easier to make changes with a pencil than a wrecking bar.

The best friend of earth of man is the tree.

Wood is universally beautiful to man. It is the most humanly intimate of all materials.

A vital difference between the professional man and a man of business is that money making to the professional man should, by virtue of his assumption, be incidental; to the businessman it is primary. Money has its limitations; while it may buy quantity, there is something beyond it and that is quality.

Youth is not an age thing. It's a quality. Once you've had it, you never lose it.

If it sells, it's art.

Nature is the inspiration for all ornamentation

No stream rises higher than its source

The good building is not one that hurts the landscape, but one which makes the landscape more beautiful than it was before the building was built.

Love is the virtue of the Heart, Sincerity is the virtue of the Mind, Decision is the virtue of the Will, Courage is the virtue of the Spirit.

Architecture is essentially Human; it is the Human spirit manifesting itself. For when a Man builds, there, you've got him; you know exactly what, who and how that Man is.

Early in life, I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change

No house should ever be on any hill... It should be of the hill.