All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.

-Faulkner,William Harrison
  On his generation of writers. Interview in Paris Review, Spring.

It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only theapplication of themthat is human. Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable asthose by whichthe universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.

-Paine,Thomas
  TheAge of Reason, pt.1.

Mieux est de ris que de larmes e¤  crire Pour ce que rire est le propre de l'homme. It is better to write of laughter than of tears For laughter is the basis of humankind.

-Rabelais, Fran c° ois
  Gargantua, Aux lecteurs.

The whole basis of the views of architecture prevailing today must be displaced by therecognition that the only possible point of departure for our artistic creation is modern life.

-Wagner, Otto
  Modern Architecture (1895), preface.