Quotations

Christopher Wren


View the biography of Christopher Wren


In things to be seen at once, much variety makes confusion, another vice of beauty. In things that are not seen at once, and have no respect one to another, great variety is commendable, provided this variety transgress not the rules of optics and geometry.
Quoted in W.H. Auden and L. Kronenberger The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York: Viking Press, 1966.
Mathematical demonstrations being built upon the impregnable Foundations of Geometry and Arithmetick are the only truths that can sink into the Mind of Man, void of all Uncertainty; and all other Discourses participate more or less of Truth according as their Subjects are more or less capable of Mathematical Demonstration.
From Wren's inaugural lecture.