130 quotes
All the gifts which fortune bestows she can easily take away; but education, when combined with intelligence, never fails, but abides steadily on to the very end of life.
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)
The oak... has not the efficacy of the fir, nor the cypress that of the elm.
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)
If our designs for private houses are to be correct, we must at the outset take note of the countries and climates in which they are built.
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)
But basilicas of the greatest dignity and beauty may also be constructed in the style of that one which I erected, and the building of which I superintended at Fano.
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)
Some have held that there are only four winds: Solanus from the east; Auster from the south; Favonius from due west; Septentrio from the north. But more careful investigators tell us that there are eight.
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)
There are... many... names for winds derived from localities or from the squalls which sweep from rivers or down mountains.
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)
" nothing suffers annihilation, but at dissolution there is a change, and things fall back to the essential element in which they were before. "
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)
Then again, in the human body the central point is naturally the navel. For if a man be placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a pair of compasses centered at his navel, the fingers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch the circumference of a circle described therefrom.
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)
Some springs are acid, as at Lyncestus and in Italy in the Velian country, at Teano in Campania, and in many other places. These when used in drinks have the power of breaking up stones in the bladder, which form in the human body.
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)
Some people do indeed say that Eratosthenes could not have inferred the true measure of the earth. Whether true or untrue, it cannot affect the truth of what I have written on the fixing of the quarters from which the different winds blow.
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)
Men have no right to profess themselves architects hastily, without having climbed from boyhood the steps of these studies and thus, nursed by the knowledge of many arts and sciences, having reached the heights of the holy ground of architecture.
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)
Noting all these things with the great delight which learning gives, we cannot but be stirred by these discoveries when we reflect upon the influence of them one by one.
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)
Let the directions of your streets and alleys be laid down on the lines of division between the quarters of two winds. On this principle of arrangement the disagreeable force of the winds will be shut out from dwellings and lines of houses.
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)
Heat is a universal solvent, melting out of things their power of resistance, and sucking away and removing their natural strength with its fiery exhalations so that they grow soft, and hence weak, under its glow.
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)
The steps in front must be arranged so that there shall always be an odd number of them; for thus the right foot, with which one mounts the first step, will also be the first to reach the level of the temple itself.
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)
The architect should be equipped with knowledge of many branches of study and varied kinds of learning, for it is by his judgement that all work done by the other arts is put to test. This knowledge is the child of practice and theory.
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)
It is not as a very great philosopher, nor as an eloquent rhetorician, nor as a grammarian trained in the highest principles of his heart, that I have striven to write this work, but as an architect who has had only a dip into those studies.
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)
While all bodies are composed of the four elements, that is, of heat, moisture, the earthy, and air, yet there are mixtures according to natural temperament which make up the natures of all the different animals of the world, each after its kind.
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)
The leaves of these [larch] trees are like those of the pine; timber from them comes in long lengths, is as easily wrought in joiner's work as is the clearwood of fir, and contains a liquid resin, of the color of Attic honey, which is good for consumptives.
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)
For the eye is always in search of beauty, and if we do not gratify its desire for pleasure by a proportionate enlargement in these measures, and thus make compensation for ocular deception, a clumsy and awkward appearance will be presented to the beholder.
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (-15)