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 The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded...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
flower moving animal
If it is the love of that which your work represents--if, being a landscape painter, it is love of hills and trees that moves you--if, being a figure painter, it is love of human beauty, and human soul that moves you--if, being a flower or animal painter, it is love, and wonder, and delight in petal and in limb that move you, then the Spirit is upon you, and the earth is yours, and the fullness thereof.
moving men dust
But if, indeed, there be a nobler life in us than in these strangely moving atoms; if, indeed, there is an eternal difference between the fire which inhabits them, and that which animates us,--it must be shown, by each of us in his appointed place, not merely in the patience, but in the activity of our hope, not merely by our desire, but our labor, for the time when the dust of the generations of men shall be confirmed for foundations of the gates of the city of God.
color english-writer love minds purest thoughtful
The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most.
charm full language possible secret sympathy
The secret of language is the secret of sympathy and its full charm is possible only to the gentle.
among bright cannot chief die gracious great joy life marvelous power powers pure reverence tried true
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
gift good great helped man
Every great man is always being helped by everybody; for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.
happiest men others themselves training
The training which makes men happiest in themselves also makes them most serviceable to others
deal english-writer great love
Give little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.
deal great love
Give a little to love a child, and you get a great deal back
believe great humility man test truly
I believe the first test of a truly great man is humility
emotions noble poetry
Poetry is the suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions
art brutality industry life
Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality
air arab careless choice clay crowded deeply differ disgust fields gain greatness happy healthy liberty lime luxury merely national native offended openness painful pitiful population restless roots sacrifice sorrow spot spring stability struck struggling thus
I look upon those pitiful concretions of lime and clay which spring up, in mildewed forwardness, out of the kneaded fields about our capital... not merely with the careless disgust of an offended eye, not merely with sorrow for a desecrated landscape, but with a painful foreboding that the roots of our national greatness must be deeply cankered when they are thus loosely struck in their native ground. The crowded tenements of a struggling and restless population differ only from the tents of the Arab or the Gipsy by their less healthy openness to the air of heaven, and less happy choice of their spot of earth; by their sacrifice of liberty without the gain of rest, and of stability without the luxury of change.
certain confining degrade material meant measured narrow objects originally sorts wealth word
What right have you to take the word wealth, which originally meant ''well-being,'' and degrade and narrow it by confining it to certain sorts of material objects measured by money.