Quote

[For men] to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes - this, nature bade not, - this, God blesses not, - this, humanity for no long time is able to endure.

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
Find
Souls
Counted
Bade
Whole
Endure
Hammer
Unrecognized
Feel
Humanity
Hammers
Blesses
Feels
Within
Strokes
Numbered
Long
Political
Abyss
Withering
Men
Nature
Mechanism
Sunk
Time
Able
Wheels
Weighed
Soul
Bless
Heap

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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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Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
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The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.
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Multitudes think they like to do evil yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world.
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We must note carefully what distinction there is between a healthy and a diseased love of change for as it was in healthy love of change that the Gothic architecture rose, it was partly in consequence of diseased love of change that it was destroyed.
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Painting with all its technicalities, difficulties, and peculiar ends, is nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing.
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When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought is incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.
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Levi's station in life was the receipt of custom and Peter's, the shore of Galilee and Paul's, the antechambers of the High- Priest, which station in life each had to leave, with brief notice.
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High art consists neither in altering, nor in improving nature but in seeking throughout nature for 'whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are pure' in loving these, in displaying to the utmost of the painter's power such loveliness as is in them, and directing the thoughts of others to them by winning art, or gentle emphasis.
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Wise laws and just restraints are to a noble nation not chains, but chains of mail, -- strength and defense, though something of an incumbrance.
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If the thing is impossible, you need not trouble yourselves about it if possible, try for it.
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Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.
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The wisest men are wise to the full in death.
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There is a working class - strong and happy - among both rich and poor: there is an idle class - weak, wicked, and miserable - among both rich and poor.
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Our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves what shall be true for the future.
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Without the perfect sympathy with the animals around them, no gentleman's education, no Christian education, could be of any possible use.
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In great countries, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents want to make them into adults. In vile countries, the children are always wanting to be adults and the parents want to keep them children.
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Every great man is always being helped by everybody, for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.
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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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