Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for ever. 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, and that men will say as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, "See! this our fathers did for us."
Where these words come from
- 95% sureThese words were traced back to where they first appeared. That source is listed below.
- The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), The Lamp of Memory; Exact wording and attribution checked. Ruskin considers architecture as a witness to past generations and an obligation to future ones.
- The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), The Lamp of Memory
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John RuskinPolitical economy means, in plain English, nothing more than "citizens' economy"; and its first principles ought, therefore, to be understood by all who mean to take the responsibility of citizens, as those of household economy by all who take the responsibility of householders.John RuskinAnd a nation's labour, well applied, is in like manner, amply sufficient to provide its whole population with good food and comfortable habitation; and not with those only, but with good education besides, and objects of luxury, art treasures, such as these you have around you now.John RuskinWhatever rebuke you would address to the improvident master of an ill-managed patrimony, precisely that rebuke we should address to ourselves, so far as we leave our population in idleness and our country in disorder.John RuskinThe principles which are right in the administration of a few fields, are right also in the administration of a great country from horizon to horizon: idleness does not cease to be ruinous because it is extensive, nor labour to be productive because it is universal.John RuskinI believe that the masses have a right to claim education from their government; but only so far as they acknowledge the duty of yielding obedience to their government.John Ruskin
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