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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.

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
Would
Grows
Shape
Girl
Piece
Chisel
Cannot
Shapes
Chisels
Doe
Rock
Girly
Anything
Rocks
Bronze
May
Flower
Hammer
Better
Pieces
Hammers
Kind
Boys
Cute

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Sky is the part of creation in which Nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her.
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Freedom is only granted us that obedience may be more perfect.
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The entire vitality of art depends upon its being either full of truth, or full of use and that, however pleasant, wonderful, or impressive it may be in itself, it must yet be of inferior kind, and tend to deeper inferiority, unless it has clearly one of these main objects, either to state a true thing, or to adorn a serviceable one.
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Make yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts. None of us knows what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful thought-proof against all adversity. Bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble histories, faithful sayings, treasure houses of precious and restful thoughts, which care cannot disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty take away from us.
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Greater completion marks the progress of art, absolute completion usually its decline.
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The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.
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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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How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty.
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The truths of nature are one eternal change, one infinite variety. There is no bush on the face of the globe exactly like another bush there are no two trees in the forest whose boughs bend into the same network, nor two leaves on the same tree which could not be told one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike.
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The history of humanity is not the history of its wars, but the history of its households.
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Every duty we omit obscures some truth we should have known.
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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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