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We may live without her, and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her. How cold is all history, how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears!

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
Living
Writes
History
Compared
Cannot
Architecture
Remember
Bears
May
Worship
Uncorrupted
Live
Nation
Lifeless
Without
Cold
Imagery
Writing
Nations
Marble

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No one can become rich by the efforts of only their toil, but only by the discovery of some method of taxing the labor of others.
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Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves and art exclusively with things as they affect the human sense and human soul.
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It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.
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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.
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The relative majesty of buildings depends more on the weight and vigour of their masses than any other tribute of their design.
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You may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does.
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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 path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers but they rise behind her steps, not before them.
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Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.
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It is far better to give work that is above a person, than to educate the person to be above their work.
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And remember, child, that nothing is ever done beautifully, which is done in rivalship or nobly, which is done in pride.
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Other men used their effete faiths and mean faculties with a high moral purpose. The Venetian gave the most earnest faith, and the lordliest faculty, to gild the shadows of an antechamber, or heighten the splendours of a holiday.
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It is advisable that a person know at least three things, where they are, where they are going, and what they had best do under the circumstances.
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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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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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Society has sacrificed its virtues to the Goddess of Getting Along.
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If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses.
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To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.
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