Quote

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.

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
Would
Words
Precisely
Wish
Greek
Use
Sounds
Nomenclature
Science
English
Instructive
Tell
Green
Coloured
Firsts
Instead
Plainly
First
Called
Leafs
Thing
Sound
Leaf

More quotes by John Ruskin

Image
There is material enough in a single flower for the ornament of a score of cathedrals.
John Ruskin
Image
There is no music in a “rest” that I know of, but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody.
John Ruskin
Image
Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to oar moral nature in its purity and perfection.
John Ruskin
Image
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.
John Ruskin
Image
Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth.
John Ruskin
Image
The highest thoughts are those which are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any composition and praise to which it is entitled are in exact proportion to its dependency of language or expression.
John Ruskin
Image
Come, ye cold winds, at January's call, On whistling wings, and with white flakes bestrew The earth.
John Ruskin
Image
To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.
John Ruskin
Image
Multitudes think they like to do evil yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world.
John Ruskin
Image
Once thoroughly our own, the knowledge ceases to give us pleasure.
John Ruskin
Image
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.
John Ruskin
Image
Every noble life leaves the fibre of it interwoven forever in the work of the world.
John Ruskin
Image
The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
John Ruskin
Image
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.
John Ruskin
Image
All of one's life is music, if one touches the notes rightly, and in time.
John Ruskin
Image
You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself.
John Ruskin
Image
All the other passions do occasional good, but whenever pride puts in its word, everything goes wrong, and what it might really be desirable to do, quietly and innocently, it is mortally dangerous to do, proudly.
John Ruskin
Image
Fit yourself for the best society, and then, never enter it.
John Ruskin
Image
The man who can see all gray, and red, and purples in a peach, will paint the peach rightly round, and rightly altogether. But the man who has only studied its roundness may not see its purples and grays, and if he does not will never get it to look like a peach so that great power over color is always a sign of large general art-intellect.
John Ruskin
Image
The proof of a thing's being right is that it has power over the heart that it excites us, wins us, or helps us.
John Ruskin