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Osbert Lancaster Quotes

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Famous Osbert Lancaster Quotes

“Structural truth at all costs war their motto and all buildings which attempted to conceal the true nature of their construction, or to disguise the materials in which they were carried out, stood convicted of acting a lie. That a high proportion of the buildings which many generations of man-kind had agreed to regard as masterpieces failed to reach this exalted standard was held to be quite irrelevant. Unfortunately the new theory did not in practice prove quite so easy to carry out satisfactorily as hoped. Simplicity is not invariably and on every occasion a virtue, and while desperate attempts to lend some transient interest to a hopelessly uninspired structure by a top-dressing of cornice and pilasters are doubtless reprehensible, the bright, unvarnished truth tends too often to be even more depressing. After all few of us, by and large, look our best in the nude.”

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