Ruin marble is a kind of limestone or marble that contains light and dark patterns, giving the impression of a ruined cityscape. The patterns (similar to Liesegang rings) develop during diagenesis due to periodic rhythmic precipitation of iron hydroxides from oxidizing aqueous fluids restricted laterally by calcite filled joints.
Famous quotes containing the words ruin and/or marble:
“A tempest cracked on the theatre. Quickly,
The wind beat in the roof and half the walls.
The ruin stood still in an external world.
It had been real. It was something overseas
That I remembered, something that I remembered
Overseas, that stood in an external world.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)