John Ruskin Quotes

Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth. I find this more and more every day: an infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of all the truly great men. It is sure to involve a relative intensity of disdain towards base things, and an appearance of sternness and arrogance in the eyes of all hard, stupid, and vulgar people

Walt Whitman defended the sacredness of love, the purity of passion - the passion that builds every home and fills the world with art and song.

If only life could be a little more tender and art a little more robust.

Throwing money at something doesn't really create - forgive me that onerous word - art.

If you cannot learn to love real art, at least learn to hate sham art and reject it.

For thousands of years, human beings have been obsessed with beauty, truth, love, honor, altruism, courage, social relationships, art, and God. They all go together as subjective experiences, and it's a straw man to set God up as the delusion. If he is, then so is truth itself or beauty itself.

Such discussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in art or poetry, to discriminate between what is more and what is less excellent in them, or to use words like beauty, excellence, art, poetry, with a more precise meaning than they would otherwise have.

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.

Art is about expressing the true nature of the human spirit in whatever way one wishes to express it. If it is honest, it is beautiful. If it is not honest, it is obvious.

Great art - or good art - is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind. I don't think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different.

All beauty is truth, and all truth is compassionate. Few know that; fewer still can express it.

My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful, but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.

Art is truth.

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.

Great art always transcends its culture, while lesser art merely reflects it.

An artist cannot be partially sincere any more than art can be an approximation of beauty.

Always make your work be personal. And, you never have to lie... There is something we know that's connected with beauty and truth. There is something ancient. We know that art is about beauty, and therefore it has to be about truth.

No picture can be good which deceives by its imitation, for the very reason that nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

The real thing creates its own poetry.

Earth has nothing more tender than a woman's heart when it is the abode of piety.

Accuracy is essential to beauty.

Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other.

Truthfullness to life-both fantasy life and factual life-is the basis of all great art.

Honesty: The best of all the lost arts.

If art, all art, is concerned with truth, then a society in denial will not find much use for it.