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 The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded...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
If the design of the building be originally bad, the only virtue it can ever possess will be signs of antiquity.
What is really desired, under the name of riches, is essentially, power over men ... this power ... is in direct proportion to the poverty of the men over whom it is exercised, and in inverse proportion to the number of persons who are as rich as ourselves.
What right have you to take the word wealth, which originally meant well-being, and degrade and narrow it by confining it to certain sorts of material objects measured by money.
I had no companions to quarrel with, nobody to assist, and nobody to thank... the evil consequence of all this was not, however, what might perhaps have been expected, that I grew up selfish or non affectionate; but that, when affection did come, it came with a violence utterly rampant and unmanageable.
Greater completion marks the progress of art, absolute completion usually its decline.
They are the weakest-minded and the hardest-hearted men that most love change.
Without seeking, truth cannot be known at all. It can neither be declared from pulpits, nor set down in articles, nor in any wise prepared and sold in packages ready for use. Truth must be ground for every man by itself out of it such, with such help as he can get, indeed, but not without stern labor of his own.
The secret of language is the secret of sympathy, and its full charm is possible only to the gentle
Death is not a journey into an unknown land; it is a voyage home. We are going, not to a strange country, but to our fathers house.
Not without design does God write the music of our lives. Be it ours to learn the time, and not be discouraged at the rests. If we say sadly to ourselves, "There is no music in a rest," let us not forget " there is the making of music in it." The making of music is often a slow and painful process in this life. How patiently God works to teach us! How long He waits for us to learn the lesson!
In the range of inorganic nature. I doubt if any object can be found more perfectly beautiful than a fresh, deep snowdrift, seen under warm light.
Trust thou thy Love: if she be proud, is she not sweet? Trust thou thy love: if she be mute, is she not pure? Lay thou thy soul full in her hands, low at her feet- Fail, Sun and Breath!-yet, for thy peace, she shall endure.
We are, after all, only trustees of the wealth we possess. Without the community and its resources... there would be little wealth for anyone.
God intends no man to live in this world without working, but it seems to me no less evident that He intends every man to be happy in his work.