John Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskinwas the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy. His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. Ruskin penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth8 February 1819
Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them.
A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.
The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it.
All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.
Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.
It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately.
To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.
The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work.
Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.
The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.
Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.
It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.
It is his restraint that is honorable to a person, not their liberty.
Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.