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There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.

John Ruskin

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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
Whole
Commonplace
Never
Vulgar
Painful
However
Pain
Affectation
Cannot
Concealment
Truth
Vulgarity
May
Unimportant

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... Amongst all the mechanical poison that this terrible nineteenth century has poured upon men, it has given us at any rate one antidote - the Daguerreotype. (1845)
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In great countries, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents want to make them into adults. In vile countries, the children are always wanting to be adults and the parents want to keep them children.
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No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.
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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.
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Freedom is only granted us that obedience may be more perfect.
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Not without design does God write the music of our lives.
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My mother's influence in molding my character was conspicuous. She forced me to learn daily long chapters of the Bible by heart. To that discipline and patient, accurate resolve I owe not only much of my general power of taking pains, but of the best part of my taste for literature.
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Though you may have known clever men who were indolent, you never knew a great man who was so and when I hear a young man spoken of as giving promise of great genius, the first question I ask about him always is, Does he work?
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Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know in life.
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To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.
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The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.
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Do not think of your faults, still less of other's faults look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.
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Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to oar moral nature in its purity and perfection.
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All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.
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When the whole world turns clown, and paints itself red with its own hearts blood instead of vermilion, it is something else than comic.
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One of the worst diseases to which the human creature is liable is its disease of thinking.
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Without the perfect sympathy with the animals around them, no gentleman's education, no Christian education, could be of any possible use.
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Your labor only may be sold, your soul must not.
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