“Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.”
Leonardo da Vinci
NatureSimplicity
Design Quotes
200 FAMOUS QUOTES · DESIGN
Design Quotes
Read 200 of the best design quotes about simplicity, beauty, function and creativity, from William Morris, Leonardo, Emerson, Confucius and more.
“The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct is its appeal.”
Wassily Kandinsky
AbstractionClarity
“When colour is at its richest, form is at its fullest.”
Paul Cézanne
ColourForm
“Patience is also a form of action.”
Auguste Rodin
PatienceProcess
“The work of the master reeks not of the sweat of the brow - suggests no effort - and is finished from its beginning.”
James McNeill Whistler
EffortlessMastery
“Drawing is not what one sees but what one can make others see.”
Edgar Degas
CommunicationDrawing
“Drawing is the probity of art.”
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
DrawingFoundations
“What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity.”
Henri Matisse
BalanceCalm
“Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements at the painter's disposal for the expression of his feelings.”
Henri Matisse
CompositionLayout
“What is now proved was once only imagin'd.”
William Blake
ImaginationInnovation
“Painters and poets have always had an equal licence in daring invention.”
Horace
CreativityFreedom
“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”
Epictetus
VisionExecution
“Art completes what nature cannot bring to a finish.”
Aristotle
NatureCraft
“He formed it to be inhabited.”
The Bible (Isaiah 45:18)
PurposeUser-Centred Design
“No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old.”
The Bible (Luke 5:36)
ConsistencyRedesign
“Let all things be done decently and in order.”
The Bible (1 Corinthians 14:40)
OrderOrganisation
“Whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; think on these things.”
The Bible (Philippians 4:8)
BeautyInspiration
“Every wise hearted man, in whom the Lord put wisdom and understanding to know how to work all manner of work.”
The Bible (Exodus 36:1)
SkillCraftsmanship
“So may the outward shows be least themselves: the world is still deceived with ornament.”
William Shakespeare
OrnamentHonesty
“'Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on.”
William Shakespeare
ColourNatural Beauty
“Without all ornament, itself and true.”
William Shakespeare
SimplicityAuthenticity
“The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.”
G. K. Chesterton
ProfessionalismFunny
“By Design I mean Order in human feeling and thought and in the many and varied activities by which that feeling or thought is expressed.”
Denman Waldo Ross
DesignOrder
“In Harmony, Balance, and Rhythm we have the three principal modes of Order.”
Denman Waldo Ross
HarmonyBalance
“Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.”
Isaac Newton
SimplicityNature