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 The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded...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
That thirst (for applause) if the last infirmity of noble minds, is also the first infirmity of weak ones
This is the true nature of home -- it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from injury, but from all terror, doubt and division.
The weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which worthily used, will be a gift to his race forever
The training which makes men happiest in themselves also makes them most serviceable to others
Reverence is the chief joy and power of life - reverence for that which is pure and bright in youth; for what is true and tried in age; for all that is gracious among the living, great among the dead, - and marvelous in the powers that cannot die
The entire object of true education, is to make people not merely do the right thing, but to enjoy right things; not merely industrious, but to love industry; not merely learned, but to love knowledge.
The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.
The higher a man stands, the more the word ''vulgar'' becomes unintelligible to him.
At every moment of our lives we should be trying to find out, not in what we differ with other people, but in what we agree with them.
It is eminently a weariable faculty, eminently delicate, and incapable of bearing fatigue; so that if we give it too many objects at a time to employ itself upon, or very grand ones for a long time together, it fails under the effort, becomes jaded, exactly as the limbs do by bodily fatigue, and incapable of answering any farther appeal till it has had rest.
Do not think it wasted time to submit yourself to any influence that will bring upon you any noble feeling.
It is advisable that a person know at least three things, where they are, where they are going, and what they had best do under the circumstances.
My entire delight was in observing without being myself noticed,- if I could have been invisible, all the better. . . to be in the midst of it, and rejoice and wonder at it, and help it if I could, - happier if it needed no help of mine, - this was the essential love of Nature in me, this the root of all that I have usefully become, and the light of all that I have rightly learned.
Nature is always mysterious and secret in her use of means; and art is always likest her when it is most inexplicable.