Proportion

Famous quotes containing the word proportion:

    Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites.
    George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)

    The private buildings [of Virginia] are very rarely constructed of stone or brick; much the greatest proportion being of scantling and boards, plastered with lime. It is impossible to devise things more ugly, uncomfortable, and happily more perishable.
    Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

    A great proportion of architectural ornaments are literally hollow, and a September gale would strip them off, like borrowed plumes, without injury to the substantials.... What if an equal ado were made about the ornaments of style in literature, and the architects of our bibles spent as much time about their cornices as the architects of our churches do? So are made the belles-lettres and the beaux-arts and their professors.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)