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 The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded...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
Science studies the relations of things to each other: but art studies only their relations to man.
Science has to do with facts, art with phenomena. To science, phenomena are of use only as they lead to facts; and to art, facts are of use only as they lead to phenomena.
Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves; and art exclusively with things as they affect the human sense and human soul.
I wish they would use English instead of Greek words. When I want to know why a leaf is green, they tell me it is coloured by "chlorophyll," which at first sounds very instructive; but if they would only say plainly that a leaf is coloured green by a thing which is called "green leaf," we should see more precisely how far we had got.
The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.
Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves.
See that your children be taught, not only the labors of the earth, but the loveliness of it.
Science lives only in quiet places, and with odd people, mostly poor.
Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.
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