Quote

All you have really to do is to keep your back as straight as you can and not think about what is upon it. The real and essential meaning of virtue is that straightness of back.

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
Virtue
Upon
Keep
Back
Straightness
Real
Straight
Really
Essential
Think
Essentials
Thinking
Meaning

More quotes by John Ruskin

Image
Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.
John Ruskin
Image
People are eternally divided into two classes, the believer, builder, and praiser...and the unbeliever, destroyer and critic.
John Ruskin
Image
Shadows are in reality, when the sun is shining, the most conspicuous thing in a landscape, next to the highest lights.
John Ruskin
Image
Come, ye cold winds, at January's call, On whistling wings, and with white flakes bestrew The earth.
John Ruskin
Image
The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don't mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.
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
Morality does not depend on religion.
John Ruskin
Image
I am almost sick and giddy with the quantity of things in my head, all tempting and wanting to be worked out.
John Ruskin
Image
Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.
John Ruskin
Image
The Divine mind is as visible in its full energy of operation on every lowly bank and mouldering stone as in the lifting of the pillars of heaven, and settling the foundation of the earth.
John Ruskin
Image
It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little.
John Ruskin
Image
We may live without her, and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her. How cold is all history, how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears!
John Ruskin
Image
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.
John Ruskin
Image
Government and cooperation are in all things the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, the laws of death.
John Ruskin
Image
In painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter your manner.
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
No one can explain how the notes of a Mozart melody, or the folds of a piece of Titian's drapery, produce their essential effects. If you do not feel it, no one can by reasoning make you feel it.
John Ruskin
Image
Value is the life-giving power of anything cost, the quantity of labour required to produce it its price, the quantity of labourwhich its possessor will take in exchange for 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
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