Hector Guimard

"I love architecture, because in its essence, in its structure, in its function, and in all of its manifestations, it contains within itself every one of the other arts, without exception."

"The artist does not create his environment; he is the product thereof."

"It is upon us architects that falls more particularly the duty of determining, by our art, not only the artistic, but also the civilizing and scientific evolution of our time."

"By studying the principles of art which have guided artists from the earliest period down to the present day, it is possible to make a selection, and that if we will take the trouble to find out how our predecessors managed to discover them, we can by applying the same method to the conditions prevailing in our own times, deduce therefrom the proper modern rules."

"Every great epoch has had a stylization of art."

"For construction, do no the branches of the trees, the stems, by turn rigid and undulating, furnish us with models?"

"When the artist has met the demands of logic, that is to say when he has lived up to the requirements of a particular project and to the conditions in which he must labor, he has in a sense done the work of an engineer. But he must do more if he is to lift himself above the mere material conditions if he is to achieve the harmony and feeling that characterize a true work of art."

"A style of architecture, in order to be true, must be the product of the soil it exists and of the period which needs it."

"Let the Belgians, the German and the English evolve for themselves a national art, and assuredly in so doing they will perform a true, sound, and useful work."

"Nature is a big book from which we can draw inspiration, and it is in that book that we must look for principles, which, when found, have to be defined and applied by the human mind according to human needs."