John Ruskin Quotes
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He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.
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Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.
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The more readily we admit the possibility of our own cherished convictions being mixed with error, the more vital and helpful whatever is right in them will become; and no error is so conclusively fatal as the idea that God will not allow us to err, though He has allowed all other men to do so.
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There is nothing so small but that we may honor God by asking His guidance of it, or insult Him by taking it into our own hands.
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A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.
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If the thing is impossible, you need not trouble yourselves about it; if possible, try for it.
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The true work of a critic is not to make his hearer believe him, but agree with him.
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Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.
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The artist's business is to feel, although he may think a little sometimes... when he has nothing better to do.
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In old times, men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith; in later times, they used the objects of faith that they might show their powers of painting.
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Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.
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All great art is the expression of man's delight in God's work, not his own.
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No person who is well bred, kind and modest is ever offensively plain; all real deformity means want for manners or of heart.
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That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.
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The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.
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English artists are usually entirely ruined by residence in Italy.
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The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work.
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I do not believe that any peacock envies another peacock his tail, because every peacock is persuaded that his own tail is the finest in the world. The consequence of this is that peacocks are peaceable birds.
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As unity demanded for its expression what at first might have seemed its opposite--variety; so repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite--energy. It is the most unfailing test of beauty; nothing can be ignoble that possesses it, nothing right that has it not.
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Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer.
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Drunkenness is not only the cause of crime, but it is crime; and if any encourage drunkenness for the sake of the profit derived from the sale of drink, they are guilty of a form of moral assassination as criminal as any that has ever been practiced by the braves of any country or of any age.
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The truth of Nature is a part of the truth of God; to him who does not search it out, darkness; to him who does, infinity.
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Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth. I find this more and more every day: an infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of all the truly great men. It is sure to involve a relative intensity of disdain towards base things, and an appearance of sternness and arrogance in the eyes of all hard, stupid, and vulgar people.
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Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.