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 The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded...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
Drawing is a means of obtaining and communicating knowledge
Disorder in a drawing-room is vulgar; in an antiquary's study, not; the black battle-stain on a soldier's face is not vulgar, but the dirty face of a housemaid is.
I believe that the sight is a more important thing than the drawing...
I would rather teach drawing that my pupils may learn to love nature, than teach the looking at nature that they may learn to draw.
There is a satisfactory and available power in every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all persons have the power of learning French, Latin or arithmetic, in a decent and useful degree.
All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.
The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most.
The secret of language is the secret of sympathy and its full charm is possible only to the gentle.
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
Every great man is always being helped by everybody; for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.
The training which makes men happiest in themselves also makes them most serviceable to others
Give little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.
Give a little to love a child, and you get a great deal back
I believe the first test of a truly great man is humility