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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.

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

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Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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More quotes by 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.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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The design of a temple depends on symmetry, the principles of which must be most carefully observed by the architect.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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When the juices of trees have no means of escape, they clot and rot in them, making the trees hollow and good for nothing.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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But as for me, Emperor, nature has not given me stature, age has marred my face, and my strength is impaired by ill health. Therefore, since these advantages fail me, I shall win your approval, as I hope, by the help of my knowledge and my writings.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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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.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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Next I must tell about the machine of Ctesibius, which raises water to a height.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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The leaves of these [larch] trees are like those of the pine timber from them comes in long lengths, is as easily wrought in joiner's work as is the clearwood of fir, and contains a liquid resin, of the color of Attic honey, which is good for consumptives.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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Cold winds are disagreeable, hot winds enervating, moist winds unhealthy.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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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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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.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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Architecture is a science arising out of many other sciences, and adorned with much and varied learning by the help of which a judgment is formed of those works which are the result of other arts.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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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.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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In setting out the walls of a city the choice of a healthy situation is of the first importance: it should be on high ground, neither subject to fogs nor rains its aspects should be neither violently hot nor intensely cold, but temperate in both respects.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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Consistency is found in that work whose whole and detail are suitable to the occasion. It arises from circumstance, custom, and nature.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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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.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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With the ripening of the fruits in Autumn the leaves begin to wither and the trees, taking up their sap from the earth through the roots, recover themselves and are restored to their former solid texture. But the strong air of winter compresses and solidifies them.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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For not all things are practicable on identical principles
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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The thickness of the walls should be sufficient for two armed men to pass each other with ease.
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 proper form of economy must be observed in building houses for each and every class.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio