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One evening, when I was yet in my nurse's arms, I wanted to touch the tea urn, which was boiling merrily ... My nurse would have taken me away from the urn, but my mother said Let him touch it. So I touched it - and that was my first lesson in the meaning of liberty.

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
Away
Touched
Mother
Evening
Merrily
Wanted
Touch
Boiling
Firsts
Lessons
Libertarianism
First
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Nurse
Would
Arms
Tea
Liberty
Libertarian
Taken
Lesson

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Kind hearts are the garden, kind thoughts are the roots, kind words are the blossoms, kind deeds are the fruit.
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A nation which lives a pastoral and innocent life never decorates the shepherd's staff or the plough-handle but races who live by depredation and slaughter nearly always bestow exquisite ornaments on the quiver, the helmet, and the spear.
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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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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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God gives us always strength enough, and sense enough, for what He wants us to do if we either tire ourselves or puzzle ourselves, it is our own fault.
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Fit yourself for the best society, and then, never enter it.
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Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.
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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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There is no wealth but life.
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It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided but the men: divided into mere segments of men - broken into small fragments and crumbs of life, so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail.
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In painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter your manner.
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It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man.
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Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.
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Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.
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People are eternally divided into two classes, the believer, builder, and praiser...and the unbeliever, destroyer and critic.
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A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.
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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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Labour without joy is base. Labour without sorrow is base. Sorrow without labour is base. Joy without labour is base.
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No small misery is caused by overworked and unhappy people, in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of work itself.
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