Quote

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

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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
Truth
Either
Clearly
Adorn
States
Full
Tend
Inferiority
May
Wonderful
Deeper
Inferior
Must
State
Entire
Inferiors
Thing
Upon
However
Vitality
Kind
Use
Objects
Impressive
Art
Depends
Pleasant
True
Unless
Main
Serviceable

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All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.
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The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as the greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.
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Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy.Bothyourreligionand policy must be basedon it.
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Men are more evanescent than pictures, yet one sorrows for lost friends, and pictures are my friends. I have none others. I am never long enough with men to attach myself to them and whatever feelings of attachment I have are to material things.
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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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That man is always happy who is in the presence of something which he cannot know to the full, which he is always going on to know.
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Pleasure comes through toil, and not by self indulgence and indolence. When one gets to love work, his life is a happy one.
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All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.
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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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Whether we force the man's property from him by pinching his stomach, or pinching his fingers, makes some difference anatomically morally, none whatsoever.
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Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.
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All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.
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The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it.
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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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Cookery means…English thoroughness, French art, and Arabian hospitality it means the knowledge of all fruits and herbs and balms and spices it means carefulness, inventiveness, and watchfulness.
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A forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable, in effect a mass of one species of tree is sublime.
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All really great pictures exhibit the general habits of nature, manifested in some peculiar, rare, and beautiful way.
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Milton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak.
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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.
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That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.
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