W. G. Sebald Quotes

What's fascinating about D.C., the exteriors are these elaborate structures, this gorgeous architecture and beautiful stonework, and then you go inside and it's crap-looking - apart from the White House, which is beautiful.

Architecture aims at Eternity.

The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.

Historically, in the world of architecture, enormous amounts of care and energy have been lavished on things that are almost a cliched idea of culture.

If you want to see what a society really believes in, look at what the biggest buildings on the horizon are dedicated to.

For those of us who live in the shadow of this noisy monster, there aren't too many of us who are sorry to see it go.

Architecture immortalizes and glorifies something. Hence there can be no architecture where there is nothing to glorify.

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.

Architecture is either the prophecy of an unformed society or the tomb of a finished one.

Mankind which began in a cave and behind a windbreak will end in the disease-soaked ruins of a slum.

Architecture is an expression of values.

Some cities have fallen into ruin and some are built upon ruins but others contain their own ruins while still growing.

There are some who go through life with a shadow hanging over them, particularly if they live in a building which has long wide awnings.

I'm always the one who gets killed. And I want it to be really gory. Body parts all over the place. Mangled!

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.

Therefore, take heed how you proceed against me; for I know that for this you go about to do to me, God will ruin you and your posterity, and this whole state.

The age of the skyscraper is gone. This is the age of the housing project. Which is always a prelude to the age of the cave.

If a person cast no shadow at all, he couldn't be alive. His existence became meaningless.Execrating Apophis by destroying his shadow would cut his connection to the mortal world completely. He'd never be able to rise again. I finally understood why he'd been so anxious to burn Setne's scrolls, and he was afraid of this spell. (Carter Kane)

Symbol and metaphor are as much a part of the architectural vocabulary as stone and steel.

Eiffel saw his Tower in the form of a serious object, rational, useful; men return it to him in the form of a great baroque dream which quite naturally touches on the borders of the irrational ... architecture is always dream and function, expression of a utopia and instrument of a convenience.

See the wild Waste of all-devouring years! How Rome her own sad Sepulchre appears, With nodding arches, broken temples spread! The very Tombs now vanish'd like their dead!

Wherever Germany extends her sway, she ruins culture.

The path of increase is slow, but the road to ruin is rapid.

Through training, practice, and a deep sense of optimism, architects see opportunities where others only see a void. This has been the driving principle behind Architecture for Humanity since our founding.

A Gothic building engenders true religion ... The light, falling through colored glass, the singular forms of the architecture, unite to give a silent image of that infinite mystery which the soul for ever feels, and never comprehends.