While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.

I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more.

Pale Death beats equally at the poor man's gate and at the palaces of kings.

Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can endure

If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man — and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages — it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.