"When we build, let us think that we build for ever." -John Ruskin
This line is from "The Seven Lamps of Architecture," an essay by the art critic Ruskin that applied philosophical considerations to architectural theory. The titular "lamps," for example, are Ruskin's tenets of ideal architecture, and include such concepts as truth, obedience and sacrifice. When we build, wrote Ruskin, "let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them."
