VII, 9
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII
“It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.”
The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered (1896)
Context: Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open apple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever brooding hills, remain for ages; the lightning lives, comes into shape, and dies in a twinkling.
It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.
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Louis Sullivan 33
American architect 1856–1924Related quotes
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Marcus Annaeus Seneca
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From Epigrammata: De Qualitate Temporis 7, 7 as quoted in L. De Mauri, Angelo Paredi, Gabriele Nepi, 5000 proverbi e motti latini https://books.google.gr/books?id=hjiMpXCMCvsC&printsec=, Hoepli Editore, 1995, p. 384 and Hubertus Kudla, Lexikon der lateinischen Zitate https://books.google.gr/books?id=2Vtf_GVrdbgC&dq=, C. H. Beck, 2007, p. 416. The full text can be found in Anthologia Latina I, fasc. 1 (Walter de Gruyter, 1982) https://books.google.gr/books?id=PHWq0avQcGIC&pg=, ed. by D. R. Shackleton Bailey, p. 164. Harold Edgeworth Butler ( Post-Augustan Poetry: From Seneca to Juvenal https://books.google.gr/books?id=2gR48lrVJ-cC&dq=, Library of Alexandria, 1969, ch. 2, sec. 2) attributes De Qualitate Temporis to Seneca the Younger.
Misattributed
Thomas Carlyle
(1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet
Context: We are to remember what an umpire Nature is; what a greatness, composure of depth and tolerance there is in her. You take wheat to cast into the Earth's bosom; your wheat may be mixed with chaff, chopped straw, barn-sweepings, dust and all imaginable rubbish; no matter: you cast it into the kind just Earth; she grows the wheat, — the whole rubbish she silently absorbs, shrouds it in, says nothing of the rubbish. The yellow wheat is growing there; the good Earth is silent about all the rest, — has silently turned all the rest to some benefit too, and makes no complaint about it! So everywhere in Nature! She is true and not a lie; and yet so great, and just, and motherly in her truth. She requires of a thing only that it be genuine of heart; she will protect it if so; will not, if not so. There is a soul of truth in all the things she ever gave harbor to. Alas, is not this the history of all highest Truth that comes or ever came into the world?