JOHN RUSKIN


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John Ruskin

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.
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John Ruskin

You do not see with the lens of the eye. You seen through that, and by means of that, but you see with the soul of the eye.
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John Ruskin

[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.
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John Ruskin

When we build ... let it not be for present delights nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think ... that a time is to come when these stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labor, and the wrought substance of them, See! This our fathers did for us!
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John Ruskin

A good law is one that holds, whether you recognize it or not; a bad law is one that cannot, however much you ordain it.
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John Ruskin

To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered.
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John Ruskin

All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be effort, and the law of human judgment, mercy.
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John Ruskin

The sculptor does not work for the anatomist, but for the common observer of life and nature.
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John Ruskin

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.
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John Ruskin

The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
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John Ruskin
© William Downey (1829-1915), forW. & D. D
John Ruskin
  • Born: February 8, 1819
  • Died: January 20, 1900
  • Nationality: English
  • Profession: Writer
Biography

John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, philosopher, prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.

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