John Ruskin Quotes

Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth.

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.

I want that every piece of art be honest, never mind what it is about.

Since obscenity is the truth of our passion today, it is the only stuff of art - or almost the only stuff.

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.

What is called a sincere work is one that is endowed with enough strength to give reality to an illusion.

Only truthful hands write true poems. I cannot see any basic difference between a handshake and a poem.

The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal.

I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies.

Being honest is my job. That's what music is for me.

Picasso said, 'Art is a lie that tells the truth.' What if you just want to tell the truth and not lie about it?

Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

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.

A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.

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.

All good art is an indiscretion.

Art is truth.

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

Lying and art are very allied. But after you lie, you get to the truth.

You can be very honest without telling the truth, at least in art.

You're always starting with a nugget of truth, whether it's a song or an improv scene.