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Heat is a universal solvent, melting out of things their power of resistance, and sucking away and removing their natural strength with its fiery exhalations so that they grow soft, and hence weak, under its glow.

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

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Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
Grow
Melting
Grows
Hence
Natural
Soft
Exhalations
Away
Heat
Solvent
Power
Resistance
Sucking
Things
Weak
Removing
Universal
Glow
Strength
Fiery

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There will be no propriety in the spectacle of an elegant interior approached by a low mean entrance.
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As for philosophy, it makes an architect high-minded and not self-assuming, but rather renders him courteous, just, and honest without avariciousness. This is very important, for no work can be rightly done without honesty and incorruptibility.
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If our designs for private houses are to be correct, we must at the outset take note of the countries and climates in which they are built.
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Nothing suffers annihilation, but at dissolution there is a change, and things fall back to the essential element in which they were before.
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The design of a temple depends on symmetry, the principles of which must be most carefully observed by the architect.
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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.
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In the midst of all this great variety of subjects, an individual cannot attain to perfection in each, because it is scarcely in his power to take in and comprehend the general theories of them.
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Proportion is that agreeable harmony between the several parts of a building, which is the result of a just and regular agreement of them with each other the height to the width, this to the length, and each of these to the whole.
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There are many names for winds derived from localities or from the squalls which sweep from rivers or down mountains.
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For we must not build temples according to the same rules to all gods alike, since the performance of the sacred rites varies with the various gods.
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In all matters but particularly in architecture, that which is signified is the subject of which we may be speaking and that which gives significance is a demonstration on scientific principles. One who professes himself an architect should be well versed in both directions.
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Noting all these things with the great delight which learning gives, we cannot but be stirred by these discoveries when we reflect upon the influence of them one by one.
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The [engineer] should be equipped with knowledge of many branches of study and varied kinds of learning, for it is by his judgement that all work done by the other arts is put to test. This knowledge is the child of practice and theory.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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Philosophy treats of physics where a more careful knowledge is required because the problems which come under this head are numerous... So the reader of Ctesibius or Archimedes and the other writers of treatises of the same class will not be able to appreciate them unless he has been trained in these subjects by the philosophers.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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The difference between machines and engines is obviously this, that machines need more workmen and greater power to make them take effect, as for instance ballistae and the beams of presses. Engines, on the other hand, accomplish their purpose at the intelligent touch of a single workman...
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From prescription, in the case of hypaethral edifices, open to the sky, in honor of Jupiter Lightning, the Heaven, the Sun, or the Moon: for these are gods whose semblances and manifestations we behold before our very eyes in the sky when it is cloudless and bright.
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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.
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There are also half bricks. As the bricks are always laid so as to break joints, this lends strength and a not unattractive appearance to both sides of such walls.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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In felling a tree we should cut into the trunk of it to the very heart, and then leave it standing so that the sap may drain out drop by drop throughout the whole of it... Then and not till then, the tree being drained dry and the sap no longer dripping, let it be felled and it will be in the highest state of usefulness.
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Bodies which contain a greater proportion of water than is necessary to balance the other elements, are speedily corrupted, and lose their virtues and properties.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio