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I believe that the first test of a great man is his humility. I don't mean by humility, doubt of his power. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not of them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.

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
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J. Ruskin
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Levi's station in life was the receipt of custom and Peter's, the shore of Galilee and Paul's, the antechambers of the High- Priest, which station in life each had to leave, with brief notice.
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No one can explain how the notes of a Mozart melody, or the folds of a piece of Titian's drapery, produce their essential effects. If you do not feel it, no one can by reasoning make you feel it.
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In old times men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith, in later times they use the objects of faith to show their powers of painting.
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Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.
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Never has interest in art been so high, and never has quality been so low.
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Men are more evanescent than pictures, yet one sorrows for lost friends, and pictures are my friends. I have none others. I am never long enough with men to attach myself to them and whatever feelings of attachment I have are to material things.
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Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
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Childhood often holds a truth with its feeble finger, which the grasp of manhood cannot retain,--which it is the pride of utmost age to recover.
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The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.
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In health of mind and body, men should see with their own eyes, hear and speak without trumpets, walk on their feet, not on wheels, and work and war with their arms, not with engine-beams, nor rifles warranted to kill twenty men at a shot before you can see them.
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All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.
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The wisest men are wise to the full in death.
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There is rough work to be done, and rough men must do it there is gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do it.
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Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer.
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I am almost sick and giddy with the quantity of things in my head, all tempting and wanting to be worked out.
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No divine terror will ever be found in the work of the man who wastes a colossal strength in elaborating toys for the first lesson that terror is sent to teach us is, the value of the human soul, and the shortness of mortal time.
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I wish they would use English instead of Greek words. When I want to know why a leaf is green, they tell me it is coloured by chlorophyll, which at first sounds very instructive but if they would only say plainly that a leaf is coloured green by a thing which is called green leaf, we should see more precisely how far we had got.
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The finer the nature, the more flaws it will show through the clearness of it and it is a law of this universe that the best things shall be seldomest seen in their best form.
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Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless peacocks and lilies for instance.
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I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting.
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