"The Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) is not only a treasure for the Chinese people. It is also a treasure for the world.”

"Imagine some inexpressible construction, something like a lunar building, and you will have the Summer Palace. Build a dream with marble, jade, bronze and porcelain, frame it with cedar wood, cover it with precious stones, drape it with silk..."

"Artists, poets and philosophers knew the Summer Palace; Voltaire talks of it. People spoke of the Parthenon in Greece, the pyramids in Egypt, the Coliseum in Rome, Notre-Dame in Paris, the Summer Palace in the Orient. If people did not see it they imagined it. It was a kind of tremendous unknown masterpiece, glimpsed from the distance in a kind of twilight, like a silhouette of the civilization of Asia on the horizon of the civilization of Europe."

"Beside their being very well disposed, the Furniture and Ornaments are very rich, and of an exquisite Taste. In the Courts, and Passages, you see Vases of Brass, Porcelain, and Marble, filled with Flowers."

"In the different Apartments of which you see all the most beautiful things that can be imagined, as to Furniture, Ornaments, and Paintings, the most valuable Sorts of Wood; varnished works, of China and Japan; ancient vases of porcelain; silks, and cloth of gold and Silver. They have there brought together, all that. Art and good Taste could add to the Riches of Nature."

"Build a dream with marble, jade, bronze, and porcelain... frame it with cedar wood, cover it with precious stones, drape it with silk. This edifice, as enormous as a city, had been built by the centuries, for whom? For the peoples."

"There was, in a corner of the world, a wonder of the world; this wonder was called the Summer Palace"