Quote

All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.

John Ruskin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Ruskin
Age: 80 †
Born: 1819
Born: February 8
Died: 1900
Died: January 20
Aesthetician
Architect
Art Critic
Art Historian
Journalist
Literary Critic
Painter
Philosopher
Poet
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
London
England
Kata Phusin
Rŏsŭkʻin
J. Ruskin
John Rosukin
Jon Rasukin
Dzhon Rëskin
Ruskin
Literature
Existent
Call
Visionary
Art
Visionaries
True
Makers
Greek
Ideal
False
Ideals

More quotes by John Ruskin

Image
Men cannot not live by exchanging articles, but producing them. They live by work not trade.
John Ruskin
Image
Never has interest in art been so high, and never has quality been so low.
John Ruskin
Image
Government and cooperation are in all things the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, the laws of death.
John Ruskin
Image
There is no wealth but life.
John Ruskin
Image
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.
John Ruskin
Image
The man who says to one, go, and he goeth, and to another, come, and he cometh, has, in most cases, more sense of restraint and difficulty than the man who obeys him.
John Ruskin
Image
Whenever you see want or misery or degradation in this world about you, then be sure either industry has been wanting, or industry has been in error.
John Ruskin
Image
Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer.
John Ruskin
Image
There is in every animal's eye a dim image and gleam of humanity, a flash of strange light through which their life looks out and up to our great mystery of command over them, and claims the fellowship of the creature if not of the soul.
John Ruskin
Image
The noble grotesque involves the true appreciation of beauty.
John Ruskin
Image
Kind hearts are the garden, kind thoughts are the roots, kind words are the blossoms, kind deeds are the fruit.
John Ruskin
Image
Like other beautiful things in this world, its end (that of a shaft) is to be beautiful and, in proportion to its beauty, it receives permission to be otherwise useless. We do not blame emeralds and rubies because we cannot make them into heads of hammers.
John Ruskin
Image
A forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable, in effect a mass of one species of tree is sublime.
John Ruskin
Image
You may sell your work, but not your soul.
John Ruskin
Image
If we pretend to have reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves and our work. God's work only may express that, but ours may never have that sentence written upon it, Behold it was very good.
John Ruskin
Image
Expression, sentiment, truth to nature, are essential: but all those are not enough. I never care to look at a picture again, if it be ill composed and if well composed I can hardly leave off looking at it.
John Ruskin
Image
A man is known to his dog by the smell, to his tailor by the coat, to his friend by the smile each of these know him, but how little or how much depends on the dignity of the intelligence. That which is truly and indeed characteristic of the man is known only to God.
John Ruskin
Image
We are only advancing in life, whose hearts are getting softer, our blood warmer, our brains quicker, and our spirits entering into living peace.
John Ruskin
Image
If a great thing can be done, it can be done easily, but this ease is like the of ease of a tree blossoming after long years of gathering strength.
John Ruskin
Image
Society has sacrificed its virtues to the Goddess of Getting Along.
John Ruskin