I do not want [photography] explained to me in terms of... formulas, learned, but so hopelessly unsatisfying. I do not want my butterfly stuck on a p…

- Jacob August Riis

When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it.

- Jacob August Riis

Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blo…

- Jacob August Riis

Some defeats are only installments to victory.

- Jacob August Riis

The more I live, the more I think that humor is the saving sense.

- Jacob August Riis

Men have a trick of coming up to what is expected of them, good or bad.

- Jacob August Riis

Long ago it was said that 'one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.' That was true then. It did not know because it did not care…

- Jacob August Riis

The slum is the measure of civilization.

- Jacob August Riis