Quote

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.

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
Nothing
Vehicle
Peculiar
Noble
Difficulty
Painting
Technicalities
Language
Invaluable
Ends
Expressive
Thought
Difficulties

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
You may sell your work, but not your soul.
John Ruskin
Image
The only way to understand these difficult parts of the Bible, or even to approach them with safety, is first to read and obey the easy ones.
John Ruskin
Image
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
Image
Production does not consist in things laboriously made, but in things serviceably consumable and the question for the nation is not how much labour it employs, but how much life it produces.
John Ruskin
Image
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.
John Ruskin
Image
The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.
John Ruskin
Image
If some people really see angels where others see only empty space, let them paint the angels: only let not anybody else think they can paint an angel too, on any calculated principles of the angelic.
John Ruskin
Image
English artists are usually entirely ruined by residence in Italy.
John Ruskin
Image
All of one's life is music, if one touches the notes rightly, and in time.
John Ruskin
Image
Civilization is the making of civil persons.
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
Science studies the relations of things to each other: but art studies only their relations to man.
John Ruskin
Image
In mortals there is a care for trifles which proceeds from love and conscience, and is most holy and a care for trifles which comes of idleness and frivolity, and is most base. And so, also, there is a gravity proceeding from thought, which is most noble and a gravity proceeding from dulness and mere incapability of enjoyment, which is most base.
John Ruskin
Image
The sculptor must paint with his chisel half his touches are not to realize, but to put power into, the form. They are touches of light and shadow, and raise a ridge, or sink a hollow, not to represent an actual ridge or hollow, but to get a line of light, or a spot of darkness.
John Ruskin
Image
If you want knowledge, you must toil for it if food, you must toil for it and if pleasure, you must toil for it: toil is the law.
John Ruskin
Image
Every noble life leaves the fibre of it interwoven forever in the work of the world.
John Ruskin
Image
There are no laws by which we can write Iliads.
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
Once thoroughly our own, the knowledge ceases to give us pleasure.
John Ruskin