Quote

The finer the nature, the more flaws it will show through the clearness of it and it is a law of this universe that the best things shall be seldomest seen in their best form.

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
Form
Flaws
Best
Shall
Things
Seen
Law
Show
Universe
Shows
Clearness
Nature
Finer

More quotes by John Ruskin

Image
[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
Image
No amount of pay ever made a good soldier, a good teacher, a good artist, or a good workman.
John Ruskin
Image
It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother taught me, that which cost me the most to learn, and which was to my childish mind the most repulsive - Psalm 119 - has now become of all the most precious to me in its overflowing and glorious passion of love for the Law of God.
John Ruskin
Image
Without mountains the air could not be purified, nor the flowing of the rivers sustained.
John Ruskin
Image
Morality does not depend on religion.
John Ruskin
Image
Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy.Bothyourreligionand policy must be basedon it.
John Ruskin
Image
We may, without offending any laws of good taste, require of an architect, as we do of a novelist, that he should be not only correct, but entertaining.
John Ruskin
Image
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.
John Ruskin
Image
There are many religions, but there is only one morality.
John Ruskin
Image
Unless we perform divine service with every willing act of our life, we never perform it at all.
John Ruskin
Image
When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work.
John Ruskin
Image
You cannot have good architecture merely by asking people's advice on occasion. All good architecture is the expression of national life and character and it is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for beauty.
John Ruskin
Image
In my house there is no attempt whatever to secure harmonies of colour, or form, or furniture.... I am entirely independent for daily happiness upon the sensual qualities of form or colour-when I want them I take them either from the sky or from the fields.
John Ruskin
Image
The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.
John Ruskin
Image
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.
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
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.
John Ruskin
Image
As in the instances of alchemy, astrology, witchcraft, and other such popular creeds, political economy, has a plausible idea at the root of it.
John Ruskin
Image
It is far better to give work that is above a person, than to educate the person to be above their work.
John Ruskin
Image
Whenever you see want or misery or degradation in this world about you, then be sure either industry has been wanting, or industry has been in error.
John Ruskin