Vitruvius Quotes

Dimension regulated the general scale of the work, so that the parts may all tell and be effective.

All architecture, classical or not, must have some sense of order, and order is much harder to achieve without the straight lines and right angles that have dominated the building art from time immemorial.

So that ideas of sort of relaxed symmetry have been something for years that I have been concerned with because I think that symmetry is a neutral shape as opposed to a form of design.

Beauty is produced by the pleasing appearance and good taste of the whole, and by the dimensions of all the parts being duly proportioned to each other.

Form follows beauty.

I am obsessed with proportion, and how proportion is perceived.

Design, whether it's on your body or in your home, is the same thing. It's mixing different colors, different textures, and unexpected patterns - elements that you wouldn't often put together in an interesting way.

The beauty of a face is not a separate quality but a relation or proportion of qualities to each other.

Now architecture consists of order, which in Greek is called taxis ... Order is the balanced adjustment of the details of the work separately, and, as to the whole, the arrangement of the proportion with a view to a symmetrical result.

If proportion is the good breeding of architecture, symmetry, or the answering of one part to another, may be defined as the sanity of decoration.

Don't confuse symmetry with balance.

The rhythm of relations of color and size makes the absolute appear in the relativity of time and space.

And harmony means that the relationship between all the elements used in a composition is balanced, is good.

A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, 'Huh. It works. It makes sense.'

You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture.

In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves.

Proportions are what makes the old Greek temples classic in their beauty. They are like huge blocks, from which the air has been literally hewn out between the columns.

What has stayed true all the way through my work is my composition, I hope, and my sense of color.

Purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful.

A building is no good if someone's got to explain to you why it's good. You can't say you don't know enough about architecture - that's ridiculous. It's got to work on many levels.

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

The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.

I believe buildings are alive, and when you want to make a change, you have to change in the same symphony.

It's all in how you arrange the thing... the careful balance of the design is the motion.

In things to be seen at once, much variety makes confusion, another vice of beauty. In things that are not seen at once, and have no respect one to another, great variety is commendable, provided this variety transgress not the rules of optics and geometry.