Louis Kahn Quotes

Of all creatures in this visible world, light is the most glorious; of all light, the light of the sun without compare excels the rest.

What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.

Just think of the illimitable abundance and the marvelous loveliness of light, or of the beauty of the sun and moon and stars.

Sunlight is like the breath of life to the pomp of autumn.

Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.

The Thames was all gold. God it was beautiful, so fine that I began working a frenzy, following the sun and its reflections on the water.

Long live the sun which gives us such beautiful color.

More than anything, one is struck by the light. Light everywhere. Brightness everywhere. Everywhere, the sun.

And I should mention the light which falls through the big windows this time of day italicizing everything it touches.

When you have a brilliant sun, which is a source of vision, the light from the sun shines through every window of the house, and the brightness of its light inspires you to open all the curtains. In the vision of the Great Eastern Sun, no human being is a lost cause.

A lot of my ideas come from McNally Jackson bookstore. One of my favorite things to do is just go there and look through architecture books and interior design books. Something about the aesthetics of space and beautiful images works with my brain.

It is not night when I do see your face.

Much of life becomes background, but it is the province of art to throw buckets of light into the shadows and make life new again.

You are a fountain of the sun's light. I am a willow shadow on the ground. You make my raggedness silky.

To have the ability to withdraw into oneself and forget everything around one when one is creating - What, I think is the only requirement for being able to bring forth something beautiful. The whole thing is - a mystery.

Love is Natures second sun.

I think making things beautiful is important. But often what's first considered ugly is beautiful, too.

But it's not only: What are you going to do about touring, it's: What are you going to do with your life? Is there a point to what we do? I think there is. Making music, creating beautiful things. We have to be in love with the good and the beautiful. If we are not, then you're in a nihilistic state.

See the gold sunshine patching, And streaming and streaking across The gray-green oaks; and catching, By its soft brown beard, the moss.

All that is beautiful, and all that looks on beauty with eyes filled with fire, like a lover's eyes: all of this is yours; you gave it to me, sunlight! all these stars are yours; you gave them to me, skies!

How does light enter a house? If the windows are open. How does light enter a human? If the door of love is open.

I'm surprised when the work appears beautiful, and very pleased. And I think work can be very good and very successful without being able to call it beautiful, although I'm not clear about that. The work is good when it has a certain completeness; and when it's got a certain completeness, then it's beautiful.

White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light.... They are too pure to have a market value;they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters are they! We never learned meanness of them.

Nature made the day for exercise, work and seeing to one's business; and ... it provides us with a candle, which is to say the bright and joyous light of the sun.