Vitruvius Quotes

There are also in some places springs which have the peculiarity of giving fine singing voices to the natives, as at Tarsus in Magnesia and in other countries of that kind.

Some springs are acid, as at Lyncestus and in Italy in the Velian country, at Teano in Campania, and in many other places. These when used in drinks have the power of breaking up stones in the bladder, which form in the human body.

At Jaffa in Syria and among the Nomads in Arabia, are lakes of enormous size that yield very large masses of asphalt, which are carried off by the inhabitants thereabouts.

Copious springs are found where there are mines of gold, silver, iron, copper, lead, and the like, but they are very harmful.

Every hot spring has healing properties because it has been boiled with foreign substances, and thus acquires a new useful quality.

They make a fine purple colour by treating bilberry in the same way and mixing it with milk.

Burn shavings and splinters of pitch pine, and when they turn to charcoal, put them out, and pound them into mortar with size. This will make a pretty black for fresco painting.

the gravity of a substance depends not on the amount of its weight, but on its nature.

The fact is that pictures which are unlike reality ought not be approved, and even if they are technically fine, this is no reason why they should offhand be judged to be correct, if their subject is lacking in the principles of reality carried out with no violations.

In order that the mortar in the joints may not suffer from frosts, drench it with oil-dregs every year before winter begins. Thus treated, it will not let the hoarfrost enter it.

nothing suffers annihilation, but at dissolution there is a change, and things fall back to the essential element in which they were before.

It was a wise and useful provision of the ancients to transmit their thoughts to posterity by recording them in treatises, so that they should not be lost, but, being developed in succeeding generations through publications in books, should gradually attain in later times, to the highest refinement of learning.

In fact, all kinds of men, and not merely architects, can recognize a good piece of work...

When it appears that a work has been carried out sumptuously, the owner will be the person to be praised for the great outlay which ha has authorized; when delicately, the master workmen will be approved for his execution; but when proportions and symmetry lend it an imposing effect, then the glory of it will belong to the architect.

Even peasants wholly without knowledge of the quarters of the sky believe that oxen ought to face only in the direction of the sunrise.