Quote

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.

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
Think
Doe
Saws
Thinking
Soul
Poetry
World
Ever
Greatest
Prophecy
People
Human
Vision
Awe
Humans
Seeing
Plain
Thing
Talk
Hundreds
Something
Religion
Thousands
Way
Tell
Clearly

More quotes by John Ruskin

Image
Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect in its own bad way.
John Ruskin
Image
Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.
John Ruskin
Image
Without mountains the air could not be purified, nor the flowing of the rivers sustained.
John Ruskin
Image
Repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite,--energy.
John Ruskin
Image
To do your own work well, whether it be for life or death.
John Ruskin
Image
The sculptor must paint with his chisel half his touches are not to realize, but to put power into, the form. They are touches of light and shadow, and raise a ridge, or sink a hollow, not to represent an actual ridge or hollow, but to get a line of light, or a spot of darkness.
John Ruskin
Image
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.
John Ruskin
Image
No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.
John Ruskin
Image
Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know in life.
John Ruskin
Image
Without the perfect sympathy with the animals around them, no gentleman's education, no Christian education, could be of any possible use.
John Ruskin
Image
I would rather teach drawing that my pupils may learn to love nature, than teach the looking at nature that they may learn to draw.
John Ruskin
Image
Labour without joy is base. Labour without sorrow is base. Sorrow without labour is base. Joy without labour is base.
John Ruskin
Image
A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.
John Ruskin
Image
The enormous influence of novelty--the way in which it quickens observations, sharpens sensations, and exalts sentiment--is not half enough taken note of by us, and is to me a very sorrowful matter. And yet, if we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will become monotonous.
John Ruskin
Image
The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.
John Ruskin
Image
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.
John Ruskin
Image
It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little.
John Ruskin
Image
The child who desires education will be bettered by it the child who dislikes it disgraced.
John Ruskin
Image
The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.
John Ruskin
Image
Come, ye cold winds, at January's call, On whistling wings, and with white flakes bestrew The earth.
John Ruskin