A motto for all of our work

In his article about the restoration of the main reading room and the Bill Blass Public Catalog Room of the New York Public Library’s  Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue at 42^nd Street (“Renovating A Great Hall And A Home For Scholars”, The New York Times, March 3, 2016), David W. Dunlap writes of the painstaking work and attention to safety that has made the project run more than two years past its estimated date of completion. On the subject of the time and money that went into this project, he quotes the library’s President Anthony W. Marx: “If we do the job right, hopefully it is once in a lifetime.”  This should be a motto for all of our work (barring inherent vice of materials and acts of God).