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People are eternally divided into two classes, the believer, builder, and praiser...and the unbeliever, destroyer and critic.
John Ruskin -
Whenever I did anything wrong, stupid or hard-hearted, and I have done many things that were all three, my mother always said "it is because you were too much indulged."
John Ruskin
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The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.
John Ruskin -
It is not possible to find a landscape, which if painted precisely as it is, will not make an impressive picture. No one knows, till he has tried, what strange beauty and subtle composition is prepared to his hand by Nature.
John Ruskin -
No nation can last which has made a mob of itself, however generous at heart.
John Ruskin -
We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it.
John Ruskin -
A book worth reading is worth buying.
John Ruskin -
... A power of obtaining veracity in the representation of material and tangible things, which, within certain limits and conditions, is unimpeachable, has now been placed in the hands of all men, almost without labour. (1853)
John Ruskin
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I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal, but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his nonvulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature-not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way; and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honor.
John Ruskin -
It is eminently a weariable faculty, eminently delicate, and incapable of bearing fatigue; so that if we give it too many objects at a time to employ itself upon, or very grand ones for a long time together, it fails under the effort, becomes jaded, exactly as the limbs do by bodily fatigue, and incapable of answering any farther appeal till it has had rest.
John Ruskin -
There is material enough in a single flower for the ornament of a score of cathedrals.
John Ruskin -
No one can ask honestly or hopefully to be delivered from temptation unless he has himself honestly and firmly determined to do the best he can to keep out of it.
John Ruskin -
What do you suppose makes all men look back to the time of childhood with so much regret (if their childhood has been, in any moderate degree, healthy or peaceful)? That rich charm, which the least possession had for us, was in consequence of the poorness of our treasures.
John Ruskin -
He who offers God a second place offers Him no place.
John Ruskin
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The world is full of vulgar Purists, who bring discredit on all selection by the silliness of their choice; and this the more, because the very becoming a Purist is commonly indicative of some slight degree of weakness, readiness to be offended, or narrowness of understanding of the ends of things.
John Ruskin -
I have always found that the less we speak of our intentions, the more chance there is of our realizing them.
John Ruskin -
Milton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak.
John Ruskin -
As in the instances of alchemy, astrology, witchcraft, and other such popular creeds, political economy, has a plausible idea at the root of it.
John Ruskin -
I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting.
John Ruskin -
In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.
John Ruskin
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Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity.
John Ruskin -
You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself.
John Ruskin -
Every good piece of art... involves first essentially the evidence of human skill, and the formation of an actually beautiful thing by it.
John Ruskin -
Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.
John Ruskin