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John Ruskin Quotes - Page 14

All Quotes Age Ambition Anger Appearance Appreciation Architecture Art Atheism Beauty Business Change Character Charity Children Choices Christ Country Creation Darkness Death Design Desire Dignity Discipline Doubt Duty Education Effort Energy Evil Feelings Generosity Genius Giving God Greatness Happiness Hate Heart Heaven History Home Honesty Honor House Humanity Humility Hurt Idolatry Ignorance Imagination Imperfection Inspirational Intelligence Journey Judging Judgment Justice Kindness Knowledge Labor Labour Language Liberty Life Literature Love Lying Money Morality Morning Motivational Mountain Music Nature Obedience Pain Painting Passion Past Patience Peace Perfection Pleasure Politics Positive Power Praise Pride Progress Purity Purpose Quality Rain Reading Reality Religion Running Sacrifice School Science Simplicity Sin Slavery Sorrow Soul Success Teaching Time Truth Understanding Values Virtue Wall War Wealth Winning Wisdom Work Writing

Commerce is the agency by which the power of choice is obtained.

Commerce is the agency by which the power of choice is obtained.

Agency, Choices, Commerce

John Ruskin (1872). “The Works of John Ruskin”, p.95

Architecture concerns itself only with those characters of an edifice which are above and beyond its common use.

Character, Use, Common

John Ruskin (1849). “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, p.8

He who has learned what is commonly considered the whole art of painting, that is, the art of representing any natural object faithfully, has as yet only learned the language by which his thoughts are to be expressed.

Art, Painting, Language

John Ruskin, Louisa Caroline Tuthill (1872). “The True and the Beautiful in Nature, Art, Morals, and Religion, Selected from the Works of John Ruskin”, p.242

No one can explain how the notes of a Mozart melody, or the folds of a piece of Titian's drapery, produce their essential effects. If you do not feel it, no one can by reasoning make you feel it.

Pieces, Essentials, Produce

John Ruskin (1860). “Modern Painters ...: pt. 6. Of leaf beauty. pt. 7. Of cloud beauty. pt. 8-9. Of ideas of relation”, p.169

... Amongst all the mechanical poison that this terrible nineteenth century has poured upon men, it has given us at any rate one antidote - the Daguerreotype. (1845)

Men, Poison, Daguerreotypes

Robert Hewison, Ian Warrell, John Ruskin, Stephen Wildman, Tate Britain (Gallery) (2000). “Ruskin, Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites”, Tate Gallery Pubn

The power of association is stronger than the power of beauty; therefore, the power of association is the power of beauty.

Power, Stronger, Association

John Ruskin (1849). “Of ideas of beauty”, p.32

Inequalities of wealth, unjustly established, have assuredly injured the nation in which they exist during their establishment; and, unjustly directed, they injure it yet more during their existence. But inequalities of wealth justly established, benefit the nation in the course of their establishment; and, nobly used, aid it yet more by their existence.

Benefits, Wealth, Aids

John Ruskin (2001). “Unto this Last”, p.29, Electric Book Company

All of one's life is music, if one touches the notes rightly, and in time.

Life Is, Notes, Ifs

John Ruskin (1873). “The Ethics of the Dust: Ten Lectures to Little Housewives on the Elements of Crystallisation”, p.70

We are only advancing in life, whose hearts are getting softer, our blood warmer, our brains quicker, and our spirits entering into living peace.

Heart, Character, Blood

Sky is the part of creation in which Nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her.

Teaching, Men, Sky

John Ruskin (2013). “Selections and Essays”, p.30, Courier Corporation

The power of painter or poet to describe what he calls an ideal thing depends upon its being to him not an ideal but a real thing. No man ever did or ever will work well but either from actual sight or sight of faith.

Art, Real, Men

John Ruskin (1859). “Modern Painters: (pt.4) Modern painters of many things”, p.83

Curiosity is a gift, a capacity of pleasure in knowing, which if you destroy, you make yourself cold and dull.

Knowing, Curiosity, Dull

You must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable-nay, letter by letter... you might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly "illiterate," undeducated person; but if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, - that is to say, with real accuracy- you are for evermore in some measure an educated person.

Real, Book, Museums

John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.297, University of Virginia Press

There is large difference between indolent impatience of labor and intellectual impatience of delay, large difference between leaving things unfinished because we have more to do or because we are satisfied with what we have done.

Differences, Leaving, Intellectual

John Ruskin (1855). “Modern Painters: pt. 4. Of many things”, p.82

It is, indeed, right that we should look for, and hasten, so far as in us lies, the coming of the day of God; but not that we should check any human effort by anticipations of its approach. We shall hasten it best by endeavoring to work out the tasks that are appointed for us here; and, therefore, reasoning as if the world were to continue under its existing dispensation, and the powers which have just been granted to us were to be continued through myriads of future ages.

Lying, Work Out, Effort

John Ruskin (1867). “The Stones of Venice”, p.167

Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves.

Science, Deals

John Ruskin (1867). “The stones of Venice.-3 vol”, p.39

If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.

Reading, Book, Buying

John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.306, University of Virginia Press

I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal, but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his nonvulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature-not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way; and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honor.

Children, Lying, Mean

John Ruskin (1868). “pt. VI: Of leaf beauty. pt. VII: Of cloud beauty. pts. VIII-IX: Of ideas of relation”, p.278

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.

Political, Doe, Politics

John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.269, University of Virginia Press

Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen from bishops desiring power more than light. They want authority, not outlook.

Power, Light, Evil

John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.300, University of Virginia Press

Courage, so far as it is a sign of race, is peculiarly the mark of a gentleman or a lady; but it becomes vulgar if rude or insensitive, while timidity is not vulgar, if it be a characteristic of race or fineness of make. A fawn is not vulgar in being timid, nor a crocodile "gentle" because courageous.

Courage, Race, Rude

John Ruskin (1869). “Modern Painters: pt. 6. Of leaf beauty. pt. 7. Of cloud beauty. pt. 8-9. Of ideas of relation: Of invention formal. Of invention spiritual”, p.288

Great art is precisely that which never was, nor will be taught, it is preeminently and finally the expression of the spirits of great men.

Art, Men, Expression

John Ruskin, Louisa Caroline Tuthill (1860). “The True and the Beautiful in Nature, Art, Morals and Religion: Selected from the Works of John Ruskin...”, p.225

When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work.

Men, Effort, Grows

John Ruskin (1871). “Works. (Author's Ed.)”, p.59

Every great man is always being helped by everybody, for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.

Inspirational, Gratitude, Great Person

"Frondes Agrestes, Readings in 'Modern Painters' Chosen at Her Pleasures".

The eye is continually influenced by what it cannot detect; nay, it is not going too far, to say that it is most influenced by what it detects least. Let the painter define, if he can, the variations of lines on which depend the change of expression in the human countenance.

Eye, Expression, Variation

John Ruskin (1853). “The stones of Venice”, p.127

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