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 The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded...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
It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.
One can't be angry when one looks at a penguin.
It ought to be quite as natural and straightforward a matter for a labourer to take his pension from his parish, because he has deserved well of his parish, as for a man in higher rank to take his pension from his country, because he has deserved well of his country.
The question is not what man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate.
"Taste is not only a part and index of morality, it is the only morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is "What do you like?" Tell me what you like, I'll tell you what you are."
Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know in life.
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.