last added to October 22, 2001
"Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.""I have never been in any rich man's home that would not have looked the better for having a bonfire made of nine-tenths of all it held."
"The leading passion of my life has been and is a hatred of modern civilization."
"God made the country, man made the town, and the Devil made the suburbs."
"What business have we with art unless we can all share it?""It seems to me that the sense of beauty in the external world, of interest in the life of man as a drama, and the desire of communicating this sense of beauty and interest to our fellows is or ought to be an essential part of the humanity of man, and that any man or set of men lacking that sense are less than men, and lack a portion of their birthright just as they were blind or deaf." - "At a Picture Show"
"Is money to be gathered? Cut down the pleasant trees among the houses, pull down anicent and venerable buildings for the money that a few square yards of London dirt will fetch; blacken rivers, hide the sun and poison the air with smoke and worse, and it's nobody's business to see to it or mend it."
"Civilisation is passing like a blight, daily growing heavier and more poisonous, over the whole face of the country."
"...Unless you have a certain amount of money you shall not be allowed the exercise of the social virtues : sentiment, affection, good manners, intelligence even, to you shall be mere words; you shall be less than men, because you are needed as machines."
"...if I were to work ten hours a day at work I despised and hated, I should spend my leisure I hope - in political agitation, but I fear - in drinking."
Schilling, Bernard N. "Human Dignity and the Great Victorians". 1946, Columbia University Press