Cathedrals

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras

We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.
- R. Buckminster Fuller, 1895 - 1983

A great architect is not made by way of a brain nearly so much as he is made by way of a cultivated, enriched heart.
- Frank Lloyd Wright, 1867 - 1959

All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 1874 - 1936

Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, that the sight of them may contribute to his mental health, power, and pleasure.
- John Ruskin, 1819 - 1900

Words mean what they're generally believed to mean. When Charles II saw Christopher Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral for the first time, he called it "awful, pompous, and artificial." Meaning roughly: Awesome, majestic, and ingenious.
- S. M. Stirling

The Kingdom of God is inside you and all about you, not in mansions of wood and stone. Split a piece of wood and I am there; lift a stone and you will find me.
- Gospel of Thomas

Walls

Indeed, we do not really live unless we have friends surrounding us like a firm wall against the winds of the world.
- Charles Hanson Towne

With the pride of an artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists, the small trumpet of your defiance.
- Norman Mailer

Wisdom never kicks at the iron walls it can't bring down.
- Olive Schreiner

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope ... and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
- Robert F. Kennedy, 1925 - 1968

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger.
- William Shakespeare, Henry V

Most of us can read the writing on the wall; we just assume it's addressed to someone else.
- Ivern Ball

Myth

Men do not invent Myths. They only invent fables, and tell lies. True Myths create themselves, and find their expression in the men who serve their purpose.
- Denis Johnston

Each religion, by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.
- George Santayana, 1863 - 1921

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.
- James Kern Feibleman

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived, and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, persuasive, and realistic.
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1917 - 1963

Essentially, mythologies are enormous poems that are renditions of insights, giving some sense of the marvel, the miracle and wonder of life.
- Joseph Campbell, 1904 - 1987

Without an understanding of myth or religion, without an understanding of the relationship between destruction and creation, death and rebirth, the individual suffers the mysteries of life as meaningless mayhem alone.
- Marion Woodman

Numbers

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase.... The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.
- Frank Herbert, 1920 - 1986

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of the few; and number not voices, but weigh them.
- Immanuel Kant, 1724 - 1804

The rule on staying alive as a forcaster is to give 'em a number or give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
- Jane Bryant Quinn

Every sorrow suggests a thousand songs, and every song recalls a thousand sorrows, and so they are infinite in number, and all the same.
- Marilynne Robinson

One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.
- Clifton Fadiman, 1904 - 1999

Well, if I called the wrong number, then why did you pick up the phone?
- James Grover Thurber

Skin

We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.
- Andre Berthiaume

One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.
- Franklin Thomas

We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.
- George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.
- Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910

What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful that the garment with which it is clothed?
- Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1474 - 1564

I am a world-class weenie when it comes to letting people stick needles into me. My subconscious mind firmly believes that if God had wanted us to have direct access to our bloodstreams, He would have equipped our skin with small, clearly marked doors.
- Dave Barry

Garrison Keillor

Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.
- Leaving Home (1987)

Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.
- We Are Still Married (1989)

My ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at that time.

Beauty isn't worth thinking about; what's important is your mind. You don't want a fifty-dollar haircut on a fifty-cent head.

I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.

They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad to realize that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days.

It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.

I think the most un-American thing you can say is, 'You can't say that.'
Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough.
- All from Garrison Keillor

About:

Garrison Keillor was born at Anoka, Minnesota on 7 Aug 1942. He was raised in a strict fundamentalist sect called the Plymouth Brethren, in which dancing, drinking, and cards were forbidden, so his family became adept story tellers. He wanted to write, and set a goal of writing for the New Yorker, which he first did in 1969. After doing a story on the Grand Ole Opry for the New Yorker, he decided to try his own radio variety show. Prairie Home Companion was an instant hit, and went national in 1980, on the strength of the stories Keillor told of the mythical Lake Wobegon, "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above-average.".

Ego

Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.
- Bruce Crampton

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
- Colin Powell

Our ego is our silent partner - too often with a controlling interest.
- Cullen Hightower

Big egos are big shields for lots of empty space.
- Diana Black

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Orthodoxy

The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
- Lucille S. Harper

Two Kinds

There are only two classes in good society in England: the equestrian classes and the neurotic classes.
- George Bernard Shaw, 1856 - 1950

There are only two classes in society: those who get more than they earn, and those who earn more than they get.
- Holbrook Jackson

People are eternally divided into two classes, the believer, builder, and praiser, and the unbeliever, destroyer, and critic.
- John Ruskin, 1819 - 1900

There are two kinds of people in the world: the Givers and the Takers. The difference between the two is that the Takers eat well, and the Givers sleep well at night.
- Joy Mills

People can be divided into two classes: those who go ahead and do something, and those who sit still and inquire, 'Why wasn't it done the other way?'
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr, 1809 - 1894

There are two kinds of people in America today, those who are on TV and those who aren't.
- Dana Blankenhorn

There are 10 types of people. Those who under stand binary and those who dont.
- Anonymous

Frank Lloyd Wright

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 business man it is primary. Money has its limitations; while it may buy quantity, there is something beyond it and that is quality.

An expert is a man who has stopped thinking - he knows!

If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.

Less is only more where more is no good.

True ornament is not a matter of prettifying externals. It is organic with the structure it adorns, whether a person, a building, or a park. At its best it is an emphasis of structure, a realization in graceful terms of the nature of that which is ornamented.

I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.
- All from Frank Lloyd Wright, 1869 - 1959


About:

Frank Lloyd Wright was born at Richland Center, Wisconsin on 8 Jun 1867. He attended the University of Wisconsin for two years while apprenticed to a local builder, then left to work with several Chicago architects until 1893 when he started his own firm. His contributions to residential architecture include such things as the living room, open floor plans, and carports. In almost 75 years he designed over 500 buildings that were completed and trained hundreds of architects at his Taliesen school.

Fashion

Fashion is made to become unfashionable.
- Coco Chanel, 1883 - 1971

Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.
- Edwin Hubbel Chapin, 1814 - 1880

Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.
- George Santayana, 1863 - 1921

Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
- Jean Cocteau, 1889 - 1963

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
- Oscar Wilde, 1854 - 1900

I base most of my fashion taste on what doesn't itch.
- Gilda Radner, 1946 - 1989

Battle

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.
- Siddhartha Gautama, 563 - 483 BC

Military power wins battles, but spiritual power wins wars.
- George C. Marshall, 1880 - 1959

In this so-called age of technicians, the only battles we know how to fight are battles against windmills.
- Simone Weil, 1909 - 1943

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
- Sun Tzu

Next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained.
- Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington, 1769 - 1852

Nobody will ever win the Battle of the Sexes. There's just too much fraternizing with the enemy.
- Henry Alfred Kissinger

Economists

With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches.
- Adam Smith, 1723 - 1790

The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded.
- Edmund Burke, 1728 - 1797

In economics, the majority is always wrong.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.
- Laurence J. Peter, 1919 - 1990

Lunches don't get free just because you don't see the prices on the menu. And economists don't get popular by reminding people of that.
- Thomas Sowell

If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a conclusion.
- William Baumol