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 The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded...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 fear uniformity. You cannot manufacture great men any more than you can manufacture gold.
The best work never was and never will be done for money.
Blue color is everlastingly appointed by the deity to be a source of delight.
Come, ye cold winds, at January's call, On whistling wings, and with white flakes bestrew The earth.
The Bible is the one Book to which any thoughtful man may go with any honest question of life or destiny and find the answer of God by honest searching.
Of all God's gifts to the sighted man, color is holiest, the most divine, the most solemn.
Living without an aim, is like sailing without a compass.
The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don't mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.
The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers; but they rise behind her steps, not before them.
Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.
I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this; was it done with enjoyment, was the carver happy while he was about it?
Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.
A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.
All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.