It is in that golden stain of time that we are to look for the real light
It is in that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real light, and colour, and preciousness of architecture; and it is not until a building has assumed this character, till it has been entrusted with the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have been witnesses of suffering, and its pillars rise out of the shadows of death, that its existence, more lasting as it is than that of the natural objects of the world around it, can be gifted with even so much as these possess of language and of life.
—John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture
From the 1966 book Living architecture: Ottoman by Ulya Vogt-Göknil
