Buildings Quotes

“If it weren't for greed, intolerance, hate, passion and murder, you would have no works of art, no great buildings, no medical science, no Mozart, no Van Gogh, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Big Over Easy

“I don't know what London's coming to — the higher the buildings the lower the morals.”
― Noël Coward, Collected Sketches and Lyrics

“We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need — but are at constant risk of forgetting what we need — within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves.”
― Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

“Admirable, however, as the Paris of the present day appears to you, build up and put together again in imagination the Paris of the fifteenth century; look at the light through that surprising host of steeples, towers, and belfries; pour forth amid the immense city, break against the points of its islands, compress within the arches of the bridges, the current of the Seine, with its large patches of green and yellow, more changeable than a serpent's skin; define clearly the Gothic profile of this old Paris upon an horizon of azure, make its contour float in a wintry fog which clings to its innumerable chimneys; drown it in deep night, and observe the extraordinary play of darkness and light in this sombre labyrinth of buildings; throw into it a ray of moonlight, which shall show its faint outline and cause the huge heads of the towers to stand forth from amid the mist; or revert to that dark picture, touch up with shade the thousand acute angles of the spires and gables, and make them stand out, more jagged than a shark's jaw, upon the copper-coloured sky of evening. Now compare the two.”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).”
― Alain de Botton

“The city buildings in the distance are holding up the sky, it seems.”
― Markus Zusak, Fighting Ruben Wolfe

“[H]e could see the island of Manhattan off to the left. The towers were jammed together so tightly, he could feel the mass and stupendous weight.Just think of the millions, from all over the globe, who yearned to be on that island, in those towers, in those narrow streets! There it was, the Rome, the Paris, the London of the twentieth century, the city of ambition, the dense magnetic rock, the irresistible destination of all those who insist on being where things are happening-and he was among the victors!”
― Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities

“We built tall buildings, but we have not become any taller.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun

“The yard was a little centre of regeneration. Here, with keen edges and smooth curves, were forms in the exact likeness of those he had seen abraded and time-eaten on the walls. These were the ideas in modern prose which the lichened colleges presented in old poetry. Even some of those antiques might have been called prose when they were new. They had done nothing but wait, and had become poetical. How easy to the smallest building; how impossible to most men.”
― Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

“The Anasazi did manage to construct in stone the largest and tallest buildings erected in North America until the Chicago steel girder skyscrapers of the 1880s.”
― Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

“...Originally everything about a Greek or Christian building meant something, and in reference to a higher order of things. This atmosphere of inexhaustible meaningfulness hung about the building like a magic veil. Beauty entered the system only secondarily, impairing the basic feeling of uncanny sublimity, of sanctification by magic or the gods' nearness. At the most, beauty tempered the dread - but this dread was the prerequisite everywhere. What does the beauty of a building mean to us now? The same as the beautiful face of a mindless woman: something masklike.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“I could describe the way the smells of brine and sun have permeated every stone of every street, or the way the tide callers stand at their watchtowers and cry out the hour for their Cities. I could tell you of the many-shaped ships that crisscross the seas with careful writing stitched on their sails praying for good fortune and fair winds. I could tell you of the squid-ink tattoos that adorn the hands of every husband and wife, and of the lesser word-workers who prick words into flesh.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January

“Around us, the city twinkled, the stars themselves seeming to hang lower, pulsing with ruby and amethyst and pearl. Above, the full moon set the marble of the buildings and bridges glowing as if they were all lit from within. Music played, strings and gentle drums, and on either side of the Sidra, golden lights bobbed over riverside walkways dotted with cafes and shops, all open for the night, already packed.

Life- so full of life. I could nearly taste it crackling on my tongue.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“The truest evidence that any civilization ever leaves behind about itself is its art. Art never lies.”
― Waldemar Januszczak, Understanding art

“New ideas need old buildings.”
― Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World

“If her walls could talk they might recount the stories of generations of families, of two World Wars, of prayers she has heard, of joys she has shared, and somber times of sorrow, grief, and loss.”
― Arlene Stafford-Wilson, Lanark County Comfort

“If nothing else, Alice, you will have sight of one of the grandest buildings in the city, one of the grandest ever built, in fact. That florid thing cost three hundred eighty thousand dollars to erect! It is as ornate as a cathedral. But, oh so mixed up. A bit of everything thrown in---Second Empire, Renaissance, Italian, with Corinthian columns, no less. Gold ceiling medallions, frescoes, murals, sculptures--- even a fountain, where the futures are sold. Well, not in the fountain.” Constance laughed uncertainly. “And an ornate steam elevator… Well, just don’t bid on the cotton futures.”
― Diane C. McPhail, The Seamstress of New Orleans

“A building is only good, thought Kahn, if its ruins will be any good. He was discouraged by those who thought about buildings in terms of functionality. A building is a spirit, he said. It is made out of man.”
― Lara Pawson, Spent Light

“If buildings were made to collapse, government needs to vanish.”
― -ipi(human_bot)

“Buildings dream at night, and their dreams have a particular character. Or perhaps at night they awaken. There is nothing cordial or accommodating about buildings, whatever they might let people believe. The stresses of simply standing there, preposterous constructions, Euclidian like nothing in nature, the ground heaving under them, rain seeping in while their joints go slack with rot. They speak disgruntlement, creaks and groans, and less nameable sounds that suggest presence of the kind that is conjured only by emptiness. Grudges, plaints, and threats, an interior conversation, not meant to be heard, that would startle anyone. Jack had never realized before that the city, the parts he knew of it, might despise its human infestation.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Jack

“Your memory of the dead is like the rain—
rain colors itself same as the place it falls on:

say, entire cities, streets, & buildings.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta

“Come and see what the world looks like at the Burj Khalifa, Dubai.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“Come and see what the world looks like at the Merdeka 118, Malaysia.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“Come and see what the world looks like from the Petronas Tower 1 and the Petronas Tower 2, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“Tokyo." Mr. Fuchigami's voice inflates with pride. "Formerly Edo, almost destroyed by the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, then again in 1944 by nighttime firebombing raids. Tens of thousands were killed." The chamberlain grows silent. "Kishikaisei."
"What does that mean?" There's a skip in my chest. We've entered the city now. The high-rises are no longer cut out shapes against the skyline, but looming gray giants. Every possible surface is covered in signs---neon and plastic or painted banners---they all scream for attention. It's noisy, too. There is a cacophony of pop tunes, car horns, advertising jingles, and trains coasting over rails. Nothing is understated.
"Roughly translated, 'wake from death and return to life.' Against hopeless circumstances, Tokyo has risen. It is home to more than thirty-five million people." He pauses. "And, in addition, the oldest monarchy in the world."
The awe returns tenfold. I clutch the windowsill and press my nose to the glass. There are verdant parks, tidy residential buildings, upmarket shops, galleries, and restaurants. For each sleek, new modern construction, there is one low-slung wooden building with a blue tiled roof and glowing lanterns. It's all so dense. Houses lean against one another like drunk uncles.
Mr. Fuchigami narrates Tokyo's history. A city built and rebuilt, born and reborn. I imagine cutting into it like a slice of cake, dissecting the layers. I can almost see it. Ash from the Edo fires with remnants of samurai armor, calligraphy pens, and chipped tea porcelain. Bones from when the shogunate fell. Dust from the Great Earthquake and more debris from the World War II air raids.
Still, the city thrives. It is alive and sprawling with neon-colored veins. Children in plaid skirts and little red ties dash between business personnel in staid suits. Two women in crimson kimonos and matching parasols duck into a teahouse.”
― Emiko Jean, Tokyo Ever After

“The buildings in the area were diaphanous spreadsheets, their cells like oil slicks”
― Zain Khalid

“One of the highlights of exploring the Scottish wilderness is spotting buildings that punctuate the landscape.
They can be as humble as a doocot, as intriguing as an abandoned farmstead or as imposing as a ruined Palladian mansion.
Each one will give clues to the people who have lived on and worked the land.”
― Gabriella Bennett, The Art of Coorie: How to Live Happy the Scottish Way

“One of the least secure buildings in the world is a large city center hospital.”
― Steven Magee

“Big buildings were always the main targets of his megapolisomancy—he claimed they were the chief concentration-points for city-stuff that poisoned great metropolises or weighed them down intolerably. Ten years earlier, according to one story, he had joined other Parisians in opposing the erection of the Eiffel Tower. A professor of mathematics had calculated that the structure would collapse when it reached the height of seven hundred feet, but Thibaut had simply claimed that all that naked steel looking down upon the city from the sky would drive Paris mad.”
― Fritz Leiber, Dark Ladies: Conjure Wife/Our Lady of Darkness

“What is nocturnal demolitions?

"When the sun goes down, the buildings go away.”
― Dipti Dhakul