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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

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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
Purpose
Earnest
Faith
Shadows
Venetian
Used
Holiday
Effete
Mean
Faculty
Gild
Men
Shadow
Heighten
Gave
Splendour
High
Faiths
Moral
Faculties

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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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Expression, sentiment, truth to nature, are essential: but all those are not enough. I never care to look at a picture again, if it be ill composed and if well composed I can hardly leave off looking at it.
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The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.
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You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.
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... Amongst all the mechanical poison that this terrible nineteenth century has poured upon men, it has given us at any rate one antidote - the Daguerreotype. (1845)
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Borrowers are nearly always ill-spenders, and it is with lent money that all evil is mainly done and all unjust war protracted.
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All true opinions are living, and show their life by being capable of nourishment therefore of change. But their change is that of a tree not of a cloud.
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If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses.
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Our purity of taste is best tested by its universality, for if we can only admire this thing or that, we maybe use that our cause for liking is of a finite and false nature.
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I believe that the first test of a great man is his humility. I don't mean by humility, doubt of his power. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not of them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.
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A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.
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In old times men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith, in later times they use the objects of faith to show their powers of painting.
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It is advisable that a person know at least three things, where they are, where they are going, and what they had best do under the circumstances.
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Obedience is, indeed, founded on a kind of freedom, else it would become mere subjugation, but that freedom is only granted that obedience may be more perfect and thus while a measure of license is necessary to exhibit the individual energies of things, the fairness and pleasantness and perfection of them all consist in their restraint.
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Come, ye cold winds, at January's call, On whistling wings, and with white flakes bestrew The earth.
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Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.
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It is not the weariness of mortality, but the strength of divinity, which we have to recognize in all mighty things and that is just what we now never recognize, but think that we are to do great things by help of iron bars and perspiration. Alas! we shall do nothing that way but lose some pounds of our own weight.
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Now the basest thought possible concerning man is, that he has no spiritual nature and the foolishest misunderstanding of him possible is, that he has, or should have, no animal nature. For his nature is nobly animal, nobly spiritual,--coherently and irrevocably so neither part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy the other.
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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.
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