'A pleasant academical retreat...'

"Wednesday 6 April.   ... We then walked into the City, and then strolled about the Temple, which is a most agreeable place.   You quit all the hurry and bustle of the City in Fleet Street and the Strand, and all at once find yourself in a pleasant academical retreat.  You see good convenient buildings, handsome walks, you view the silver  Thames.  You are shaded by venerable trees.  Crows are cawing above your head.  Here and there you see a solitary bencher sauntering about.  This description I take from the Reverend Dr. Blair, who is now come to town.  To select all these circumstances shows a fine imagination."

Boswell's London Journal 1762-3  James Boswell

A judicious man

"The world's much like a fair deceitful nut,
Whereto when once the knife of truth is put
And it is opened, a right judicious eye
Finds nothing in it but meer vanitye."

Writingbook of Andrew Andrewes, 1677
National Art Library (Great Britain).  Manuscript. MSL/1960/3067

Every wise man

"For as outwardly every wise man carries himself gravely in public places ... yet inwardly has imagination and fire which sometimes flies out unrestrained, just as nature sometimes flies out to delight or amuse us (...laughter, contemplation or even horror...) -- So in Architecture the outward ornament is to be solid, proportionable according to rule, masculine and unaffected."

Inigo Jones