Authors:

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

John Ruskin Quotes - Page 17

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

I used to lie down on the grass and draw the blades as they grew - until every square foot of meadow, or mossy bank, became a possession to me.

I used to lie down on the grass and draw the blades as they grew - until every square foot of meadow, or mossy bank, became a possession to me.

Lying, Squares, Feet

All real and wholesome enjoyments possible to people have been just as possible to them since first they were made of the earth as they are now; and they are possible to them chiefly in peace. To watch the corn grow, and the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over plowshare or spade; to read, to think, to love, to hope: these are the things that make people happy.

Happiness, Real, Thinking

Candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, the sailor perceives these decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day; and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all; and they give plenary and brief without listening to confession.

Giving, Listening, Saint

John Ruskin (1871). “Selections from the Writings of John Ruskin”, p.129

In old times men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith, in later times they use the objects of faith to show their powers of painting.

Power, Men, Use

John Ruskin (1853). “The Stones of Venice: The fall”, p.108

Every good piece of art... involves first essentially the evidence of human skill, and the formation of an actually beautiful thing by it.

Beautiful, Art, Skills

John Ruskin (2013). “Selections and Essays”, p.281, Courier Corporation

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.

Flower, Moving, Animal

John Ruskin, Cook (1905). “Works”

Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities.

Mind, Want, Kind

As unity demanded for its expression what at first might have seemed its opposite--variety; so repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite--energy. It is the most unfailing test of beauty; nothing can be ignoble that possesses it, nothing right that has it not.

Opposites, Expression, Unity

I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.

Art, Pain, Two

Fors Clavigera Letter 79, 18 June 1877. This comment was the basis for Whistler's 1878 libel suit against Ruskin.

As in the instances of alchemy, astrology, witchcraft, and other such popular creeds, political economy, has a plausible idea at the root of it.

Ideas, Roots, Astrology

John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.229, University of Virginia Press

[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.

Men, Long, Political

John Ruskin (2012). “Selections From the Works of John Ruskin”, p.215, tredition

There is no music in a “rest” that I know of, but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody.

People, Missing, Melody

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

Such help as we can give to each other in this world is a debt to each other; and the man who perceives a superiority or a capacity in a subordinate, and neither confesses nor assists it, is not merely the withholder of kindness, but the committer of injury.

Kindness, Men, Giving

John Ruskin (1872). “The Two Paths: Being Lectures on Art, and Its Application to Decoration and Manufacture, Delivered in 1858-9”, p.149

To cultivate sympathy you must be among living creatures, and thinking about them; and to cultivate admiration, you must be among beautiful things and looking at them.

Beautiful, Thinking, Admiration

John Ruskin (1872). “The Two Paths: Being Lectures on Art, and Its Application to Decoration and Manufacture, Delivered in 1858-9”, p.125

There was always more in the world than men could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace.

Journey, Men, Sight

John Ruskin (1850). “Modern Painters: pt. 4. Of many things”, p.308

I believe that there is no test of greatness in periods, nations or men more sure than the development, among them or in them, of a noble grotesque, and no test of comparative smallness or limitation, of one kind or another, more sure than the absence of grotesque invention, or incapability of understanding it.

Believe, Greatness, Men

John Ruskin (2013). “The Stones of Venice -: The Fall”, p.158, Cosimo, Inc.

Nature is always mysterious and secret in her use of means; and art is always likest her when it is most inexplicable.

Art, Nature, Mean

John Ruskin (1873). “Pt. 1-2. of general principles and of truth”, p.36

We may live without her, and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her. How cold is all history, how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears!

Writing, History, May

John Ruskin (1849). “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, p.164

In all things that live there are certain irregularities, and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry.

Beauty, Perfect, Branches

John Ruskin (1854). “On the nature of Gothic architecture: and herein of the true functions of the workman in art. Being the greater part of the 6th chapter of the 2nd vol. of 'Stones of Venice'. [48 p.].”, p.14

This is the true nature of home - it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division.

Peace, Home, Doubt

John Ruskin (2006). “Sesame and Lillies: Three Lectures”, p.116, Cosimo, Inc.

No day is without its innocent hope.

Innocent

John Ruskin (2016). “The Crown of Wild Olive”, p.1038, John Ruskin

We are, after all, only trustees of the wealth we possess. Without the community and its resources... there would be little wealth for anyone.

Community, Would Be, Charity

To invent a story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a story, it is necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage concerned in it, and know precisely how they would be affected by what happens; which to do requires a colossal intellect: but to describe a separate emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel it oneself; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or that noble emotion, for one who is able to enter into all the feelings of someone sitting on the other side of the table.

People, Feelings, Mind

"Modern Painters". Book by John Ruskin. Volume III, part IV, chapter XVI, 1856.

When men do not love their hearth, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have dishonoured both ... Our God is a house-hold God, as well as a heavenly one; He has an altar in every man's dwelling.

Home, Men, Dwelling

John Ruskin (1871). “Selections from the Writings of John Ruskin”, p.340

The greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, nor in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy... which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity.

Wall, Long, Humanity

John Ruskin (1849). “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, p.172

You May Also Like: