"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." For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, or in its gold. Its glory is in its Age."

When people ask me if I take pleasure in the idea of someone looking at my buildings in the future, I tell them that this person will vanish, too. Everything has a beginning and an end. You. Me. Architecture. We must try to do the best we can, but must remain modest. Nothing lasts for very long.

Imagine this coming down,” I say out loud. I believe it’s the mammal in me that has this thought, the mammal that can remember living in trees.

When we build, let us think that we build for ever.

When we build, let us think that we build forever. 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.

Then all this," Chromis said, gesturing at the vista before them, "everything we've lived for and made, everything we've dreamed into existence—you firmly believe it won't always be here?" "It'd be egocentric to think otherwise. Almost every sentient being who ever lived belonged to a society that doesn't exist any more. Why should we be any different?" "But our deeds will remain." "If we're lucky. There's every chance they won't survive either." "That's so bleak, Rudd." "Bracing, I prefer to think." "But if nothing we do here has any guarantee of lasting, if even the best gestures have only a slim chance of outliving us—is there any reason not to just give up?" "Every reason in the world," Rudd said. "We're here and we're alive. It's a beautiful evening, on the last perfect day of summer." He turned and nodded at the waiting cauls. "Now let's go down there and make the most of it, while it lasts.

If it is true, it will always endure

Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said.

Personally I think the thing that will survive, as survives so many important figures, is the writing that they leave behind and he has left behind many books that he wrote when he was simply Joseph Ratzinger and they are standing the test of time quite well, in my view.

Know all men, he said, time's ruins build eternity's mansions.

Here is the truth he wants to ignore: that what is forged into memory tucks itself into bone and muscle. It will always be there and it will follow us to the grave.

Their buildings rise, their morality sinks. Their worldly goods increase, their values diminish. Their speeches multiply, their prayers grow scarce.... An edifice based on man may well rise, but it ends up crushing him.

We should… conclude that the abandoned big-box structures will not last more than one generation under any circumstances. […] The same thing can be said about malls, strip malls, and chain restaurant buildings. Eventually, they will be the salvage yards and mines of the future.

There is an answer to the doctor's question. All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwald, the Auschwitzes – all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God's Earth.