-
Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
John Ruskin -
The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.
John Ruskin
-
No nation can last which has made a mob of itself, however generous at heart.
John Ruskin -
A book worth reading is worth buying.
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 -
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 -
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
-
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 -
He who offers God a second place offers Him no place.
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 -
Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.
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 -
Milton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak.
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 -
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 -
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 -
The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work.
John Ruskin -
He who has once stood beside the grave, to look back upon the companionship which has been forever closed, feeling how impotent there are the wild love, or the keen sorrow, to give one instant's pleasure to the pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the departed spirit for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur that debt to the heart which can only be discharged to the dust.
John Ruskin -
The entire vitality of art depends upon its being either full of truth, or full of use; and that, however pleasant, wonderful, or impressive it may be in itself, it must yet be of inferior kind, and tend to deeper inferiority, unless it has clearly one of these main objects, - either to state a true thing, or to adorn a serviceable one.
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 -
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 -
Candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, the sailor perceives these decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day; and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all; and they give plenary and brief without listening to confession.
John Ruskin -
It is not so much in buying pictures as in being pictures, that you can encourage a noble school. The best patronage of art is not that which seeks for the pleasures of sentiment in a vague ideality, nor for beauty of form in a marble image, but that which educates your children into living heroes, and binds down the flights and the fondnesses of the heart into practical duty and faithful devotion.
John Ruskin