A Quote by Leon Battista Alberti

Beauty is the adjustment of all parts proportionately so that one cannot add or subtract or change without impairing the harmony of the whole.

Leon Battista Alberti

Quote Topics

Add Adjustment Beauty Cannot Change Harmony Parts Subtract Whole Without

Quote Author

Leon Battista Alberti
Italian - Architect
February 14, 1404 - April 25, 1472

Beauty: the adjustment of all parts proportionately so that one cannot add or subtract or change without impairing the harmony of the whole.

Leon Battista Alberti

And do you know, do you know that mankind can live without the Englishman, it can live without Germany, it can live only too well without the Russian man, it can live without science, without bread, and it only cannot live without beauty, for then there would be nothing at all to do in the world! The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here. Science itself would not stand for a minute without beauty

Fyodor Dostoevsky

The discoveries of yesterday are the truisms of tomorrow, because we can add to our knowledge but cannot subtract from it.

Arthur Koestler

Photographs offer more than decisive moments. They are not alone, they add and subtract and change with time. They are metaphors for our lives... Even a static photograph can change in the blink of a day or decade.

Edmundo Desnoes

I believe that the universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the same energy... parts of one organic whole.... (This is physics, I believe, as well as religion.) The parts change and pass, or die, people and races and rocks and stars; none of them seems to me important in itself, but only the whole. This whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it, and to think of it as divine.

Robinson Jeffers

I cannot sufficiently be astonished that such is the insanity of some men, such the impiety of their blinded understanding, such, finally, their lust after error, that they will not be content with the rule of faith delivered once and for all from antiquity, but must daily seek after something new, and even newer still, and are always longing to add something to religion, or to change it, or to subtract from it!

Vincent of Lerins

If you try to add to God's salvation you subtract. If you try to add to God's salvation you subtract. If you try to merit God's salvation you haven't believed at all, even if you try to do a little bit.

Timothy Keller

The Analytical Engine, on the contrary, can either add, subtract, multiply or divide with equal facility; and performs each of these four operations in a direct manner, without the aid of any of the other three.

Ada Lovelace

Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in style, whether it be the harmony of ugliness or beauty, vice or virtue.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

The long fight to save wild beauty represents democracy at its best. It requires citizens to practice the hardest of virtues--self-restraint. Why cannot I take as many trout as I want from a stream? Why cannot I bring home from the woods a rare wildflower? Because if I do, everybody in this democracy should be able to do the same. My act will be multiplied endlessly. To provide protection for wildlife and wild beauty, everyone has to deny himself proportionately. Special privilege and conservation are ever at odds.

Edwin Way Teale

...the change was adjustment without improvement.

Toni Morrison

If you can't add to the discussion, don't subtract by talking.

Lois Wyse

Beauty lies in harmony, not in contrast; and harmony is refinement; therefore, there must be a fineness of the senses if we are to appreciate harmony.

Maria Montessori

I rewrite a great deal. I'm always fiddling, always changing something. I'll write a few words - then I'll change them. I add. I subtract. I work and fiddle and keep working and fiddling, and I only stop at the deadline.