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The proof of a thing's being right is that it has power over the heart; that it excites us, wins us, or helps us.
John Ruskin -
In our whole life melody the music is broken off here and there by rests, and we foolishly think we have come to the end of time. God sends a time of forced leisure, a time of sickness and disappointed plans, and makes a sudden pause in the hymns of our lives, and we lament that our voice must be silent and our part missing in the music which ever goes up to the ear of our Creator. Not without design does God write the music of our lives. Be it ours to learn the time and not be dismayed at the rests. If we look up, God will beat the time for us.
John Ruskin
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I've seen the Rhine with younger wave, O'er every obstacle to rave. I see the Rhine in his native wild Is still a mighty mountain child.
John Ruskin -
The spirit needs several sorts of food of which knowledge is only one.
John Ruskin -
Multitudes think they like to do evil; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world.
John Ruskin -
The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.
John Ruskin -
All men who have sense and feeling are being continually helped; they are taught by every person they meet, and enriched by everything that falls in their way. The greatest, is he who has been oftenest aided. Originality is the observing eye.
John Ruskin -
You will never love art well until you love what she mirrors better.
John Ruskin
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So far as I have myself observed, the distinctive character of a child is to live always in the tangible present.
John Ruskin -
I desire ... to leave this one great fact clearly stated. THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE.
John Ruskin -
The virtue of the imagination is its reaching, by intuition and intensity, a more essential truth than is seen at the surface of things.
John Ruskin -
Don't just look at buildings ... watch them.
John Ruskin -
When I have been unhappy, I have heard an opera... and it seemed the shrieking of winds; when I am happy, a sparrow's chirp is delicious to me. But it is not the chirp that makes me happy, but I that make it sweet.
John Ruskin -
In mortals there is a care for trifles which proceeds from love and conscience, and is most holy; and a care for trifles which comes of idleness and frivolity, and is most base. And so, also, there is a gravity proceeding from thought, which is most noble; and a gravity proceeding from dulness and mere incapability of enjoyment, which is most base.
John Ruskin
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Men are merely on a lower or higher stage of an eminence, whose summit is God's throne infinitely above all; and there is just as much reason for the wisest as for the simplest man being discontent with his position, as respects the real quantity of knowledge he possesses.
John Ruskin -
I believe that the sight is a more important thing than the drawing.
John Ruskin -
It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man.
John Ruskin -
The names of great painters are like passing-bells: in the name of Velasquez you hear sounded the fall of Spain; .in the name of Titian, that of Venice; in the name of Leonardo, that of Milan; in the name of Raphael, that of Rome. And there is profound justice in this, for in proportion to the nobleness of the power is the guilt of its use for purposes vain or vile; and hitherto the greater the art, the more surely has it been used, and used solely, for the decoration of pride or the provoking of sensuality.
John Ruskin -
Science lives only in quiet places, and with odd people, mostly poor.
John Ruskin -
Men say their pinnacles point to heaven. Why, so does every tree that buds, and every bird that rises as it sings. Men say their aisles are good for worship. Why, so is every mountain glen and rough sea-shore. But this they have of distinct and indisputable glory,--that their mighty walls were never raised, and never shall be, but by men who love and aid each other in their weakness.
John Ruskin
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Absolute ugliness is admitted as rarely as perfect beauty; but degrees of it more or less distinct are associated with whatever has the nature of death and sin, just as beauty is associated with what has the nature of virtue and of life.
John Ruskin -
He who has learned what is commonly considered the whole art of painting, that is, the art of representing any natural object faithfully, has as yet only learned the language by which his thoughts are to be expressed.
John Ruskin -
You cannot have good architecture merely by asking people's advice on occasion. All good architecture is the expression of national life and character; and it is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for beauty.
John Ruskin -
I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to last, and built to be lovely; as rich and full of pleasantness as may be within and without: . . . with such differences as might suit and express each man's character and occupation, and partly his history.
John Ruskin