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 The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded...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
Butforme, theAlps and their peoplewerealikebeautiful in their snow, and their humanity; and I wanted, neither for them nor myself, sight of any thrones in heaven but the rocks, or of any spirits in heaven but the clouds.
He only is advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into living peace. And the men who have this life in them are the true lords or kings of the earth they, and they only.
Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect in its own bad way.
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 is not the weariness of mortality, but the strength of divinity, which we have to recognize in all mighty things; and that is just what we now never recognize, but think that we are to do great things by help of iron bars and perspiration. Alas! we shall do nothing that way but lose some pounds of our own weight.
If we pretend to have reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves and our work. God's work only may express that, but ours may never have that sentence written upon it, Behold it was very good.
Variety is a positive requisite even in the character of our food.
He who has learned what is commonly considered the whole art of painting, that is, the art of representing any natural object faithfully, has as yet only learned the language by which his thoughts are to be expressed.
Value is the life-giving power of anything; cost, the quantity of labour required to produce it; its price, the quantity of labourwhich its possessor will take in exchange for it.
Repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite,--energy.
Milton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak.
You may assuredly find perfect peace, if you are resolved to do that which your Lord has plainly required--and content that He should indeed require no more of you--than to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with Him.
No nation can last which has made a mob of itself, however generous at heart.
The power of association is stronger than the power of beauty; therefore, the power of association is the power of beauty.