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 The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded...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
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.
Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
There is no wealth but life.
Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.
The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.
Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.
He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.
Do not think of your faults, still less of other's faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.
Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.