19th-century Designer Quotes

William Morris

Edith Wharton

Louis Comfort Tiffany

Igor Sikorsky

Edward Gordon Craig

Gertrude Jekyll

Henry Royce

Type design moves at the pace of the most conservative reader. The good type-designer therefore realizes that, for a new font to be successful, it has to be so good that only very few recognize its novelty.

Stanley Morison

If art which is now sick is to live and not die, it must in the future be of the people, for the people, by the people; it must understand all and be understood by all.

Overhead hung a summer sky furrowed with the rush of rockets; and from the east a late moon, pushing up beyond the lofty bend of the coast, sent across the bay a shaft of brightness which paled to ashes in the red glitter of the illuminated boats.

The quality will remain long after the price is forgotten.

Brown people and black people and red people swarmed through our great halls, until those who were white looked simply faded-out human beings beside them. Indeed, I came to see that white is not a color in skin any more than in textiles, and if it had not quality, it had no value even for humanity. I saw that color in skin had a certain advantage in strength and warmth as a means of beauty.

Candace Wheeler

That is what the title of artist means: one who perceives more than his fellows, and who records more than he has seen.

Edward Gordon Craig

Fine fruit is the flower of commodities. It is the most perfect union of the useful and the beautiful that the earth knows. Trees full of soft foliage; blossoms fresh with spring bounty; and, finally, fruit, rich, bloom-dusted, melting, and luscious.

Andrew Jackson Downing

We have learned that beneath the surface of an ordinary everyday normal casual conscious existence there lies a vast dynamic world of impulse and dream, a hinterland of energy which has an independent existence of its own and laws of its own: laws which motivate all our thoughts and our actions.

Robert Edmond Jones

Trees are much like human beings and enjoy each other's company. Only a few love to be alone.

Jens Jensen (landscape architect)

I plant rosemary all over the garden, so pleasant is it to know that at every few steps one may draw the kindly branchlets through one's hand, and have the enjoyment of their incomparable incense; and I grow it against walls, so that the sun may draw out its inexhaustible sweetness to greet me as I pass.

Gertrude Jekyll

God has given us our talents, not to copy the talents of others, but rather to use our brains and imagination in order to obtain the revelation of true beauty.

Louis Comfort Tiffany

This machine was a failure to the extent that it could not fly. In other respects it was a very important and necessary stepping stone.

For I never have seen, and never shall see, that the cessation of the evidence of existence is necessarily evidence of the cessation of existence.

William De Morgan

When a man's home is born out of his heart and developed through his labor and perfected through his sense of beauty, it is the very cornerstone of life.

Gustav Stickley

Any man who is thoroughly capable of understanding and handling a machine may be called a mechanical engineer, but only he who knows the principles behind that machine so thoroughly that he would be able to design it or adapt it to a new purpose... can be classed as a civil engineer.

George S. Morison (engineer)

Poor dry, musty flowers! Who would believe you ever danced in the wind, drank in the evening dews, and spread sweet fragrance on the air? A touch now breaks your brittle leaves. Your odors are like attic herbs, or green tea, or moldy books. Your forms are bent and flattened into every ugly and distorted shape.