John Ruskin Quotes
-
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.
-
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.
-
There is a satisfactory and available power in every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all persons have the power of learning French, Latin or arithmetic, in a decent and useful degree.
-
A gentleman's first characteristic is that fineness of structure in the body which renders it capable of the most delicate sensation; and of structure in the mind which renders it capable of the most delicate sympathies; one may say simply "fineness of nature.
-
A book worth reading is worth buying.
-
When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.
-
As in the instances of alchemy, astrology, witchcraft, and other such popular creeds, political economy, has a plausible idea at the root of it.
-
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.
-
Childhood often holds a truth with its feeble finger, which the grasp of manhood cannot retain,--which it is the pride of utmost age to recover.
-
When men do not love their hearth, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have dishonoured both ... Our God is a house – hold God, as well as a heavenly one; He has an altar in every man's dwelling.
-
You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.
-
Your art is to be the praise of something that you love. It may only be the praise of a shell or a stone.
-
Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.
-
To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered.
-
You were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased with them, or too grasping to care for what you can not turn to other account than mere delight.
-
An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind.
-
I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting.
-
Greater completion marks the progress of art, absolute completion usually its decline.
-
The repose necessary to all beauty is repose, not of inanition, nor of luxury, nor of irresolution, but the repose of magnificent energy and being; in action, the calmness of trust and determination; in rest, the consciousness of duty accomplished and of victory won; and this repose and this felicity can take place as well in the midst of trial and tempest, as beside the waters of comfort.
-
That which is required in order to the attainment of accurate conclusions respecting the essence of the Beautiful is nothing morethan earnest, loving, and unselfish attention to our impressions of it.
-
It ought to be quite as natural and straightforward a matter for a labourer to take his pension from his parish, because he has deserved well of his parish, as for a man in higher rank to take his pension from his country, because he has deserved well of his country.