Quote

Though you may have known clever men who were indolent, you never knew a great man who was so and when I hear a young man spoken of as giving promise of great genius, the first question I ask about him always is, Does he work?

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
Firsts
Hear
First
Knew
Indolent
Giving
Asks
Laziness
Great
Though
Spoken
Work
Known
Clever
Always
Doe
Promise
Never
Young
Genius
Men
May
Question

More quotes by John Ruskin

Image
There is in every animal's eye a dim image and gleam of humanity, a flash of strange light through which their life looks out and up to our great mystery of command over them, and claims the fellowship of the creature if not of the soul.
John Ruskin
Image
Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy.Bothyourreligionand policy must be basedon it.
John Ruskin
Image
Once thoroughly our own, the knowledge ceases to give us pleasure.
John Ruskin
Image
Every good piece of art... involves first essentially the evidence of human skill, and the formation of an actually beautiful thing by it.
John Ruskin
Image
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.
John Ruskin
Image
Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, that the sight of them may contribute to his mental health, power, and pleasure.
John Ruskin
Image
What do you suppose makes all men look back to the time of childhood with so much regret (if their childhood has been, in any moderate degree, healthy or peaceful)? That rich charm, which the least possession had for us, was in consequence of the poorness of our treasures.
John Ruskin
Image
Whenever I did anything wrong, stupid or hard-hearted, and I have done many things that were all three, my mother always said it is because you were too much indulged.
John Ruskin
Image
English artists are usually entirely ruined by residence in Italy.
John Ruskin
Image
There was a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell?divine as the vale of Tempe you might have seen the gods there morning and eveningApollo and the sweet Muses of the Light? You enterprised a railroad?you blasted its rocks away? And, now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half-an-hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton.
John Ruskin
Image
Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.
John Ruskin
Image
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.
John Ruskin
Image
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.
John Ruskin
Image
Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect in its own bad way.
John Ruskin
Image
Civilization is the making of civil persons.
John Ruskin
Image
In painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter your manner.
John Ruskin
Image
Ignorance, which is contented and clumsy, will produce what is imperfect, but not offensive. But ignorance dis contented and dexterous, learning what it cannot understand, and imitating what it cannot enjoy, produces the most loathsome forms of manufacture that can disgrace or mislead humanity.
John Ruskin
Image
Wherever men are noble, they love bright colour and wherever they can live healthily, bright colour is given them—in sky, sea, flowers, and living creatures.
John Ruskin
Image
Like other beautiful things in this world, its end (that of a shaft) is to be beautiful and, in proportion to its beauty, it receives permission to be otherwise useless. We do not blame emeralds and rubies because we cannot make them into heads of hammers.
John Ruskin
Image
There is nothing that this age, from whatever standpoint we survey it, needs more, physically, intellectually, and morally, than thorough ventilation.
John Ruskin