John Ruskin Quotes
Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent.
Ruskin, John. The Stones of Venice. Vol. 2, Smith, Elder, and Co., 1853.
He traveled to Japan and stayed for the rest of his life and became a very respected Japanese writer. Japanese history had very periods of stability yet the Japanese progressed from a backward, insular, island nation to a highly technological, industrial, superpower in the presence of all the chaos and instability of government and society. The period after the Japanese defeat in the Second World War, has been the longest period of tranquility and stability in the history of Japan.
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.
