“The spire is the simplest part of the romanesque or gothic architecture, and needs least study in order to be felt. It is a bit of sentiment almost pure of practical purpose. It tells the whole of its story at a glance, and its story is the best that architecture had to tell, for it typified the aspirations of man at the moment when man's aspirations were highest.”
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Henry Adams 311
journalist, historian, academic, novelist 1838–1918Related quotes

“I don't aspire to be a good man. I aspire to be a whole man.”

“Scribal culture and Gothic architecture were both concerned with light through, not light on.”
Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 120

On using an epistolary form for her short story “Children of the Sea” in “An Interview | Edwidge Danticat” http://www.bkreview.org/fall-2018/an-interview-with-edwidge-danticat/ in The Brooklyn Review (Fall 2018)
Interviews

Letter to James Warren (24 October 1780) http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2094
Source: Civilisation (1969), Ch. 9: The Pursuit of Happiness