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 The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded...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
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.
I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting.
Civilization is the making of civil persons.
Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light.
The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.
The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.
Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are.