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 The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded...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
The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world... to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.
To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered.
The measure of any great civilization is its cities and a measure of a city's greatness is to be found in the quality of its public spaces, its parks and squares.
I cannot but think it an evil sign of a people when their houses are built to last for one generation only.
No person who is well bred, kind and modest is ever offensively plain; all real deformity means want for manners or of heart.
In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.
Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.
The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.
I believe the first test of a truly great man is in his humility.
He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.
Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.
It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.
No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.
There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey.