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 The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded...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
Production does not consist in things laboriously made, but in things serviceably consumable; and the question for the nation is not how much labour it employs, but how much life it produces.
... no human actions ever were intended by the Maker of men to be guided by balances of expediency, but by balances of justice.
Human work must be done honourably and thoroughly, because we are now Men; whether we ever expect to be angels, or were ever slugs, being practically no matter.
[For men] to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes - this, nature bade not, - this, God blesses not, - this, humanity for no long time is able to endure.
The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it.
The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.
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.
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