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Disorder in a drawing-room is vulgar in an antiquary's study, not the black battle-stain on a soldier's face is not vulgar, but the dirty face of a housemaid is.

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
Study
Vulgar
Face
Disorder
Faces
Dirty
Black
Soldier
Drawing
Housemaid
Battle
Housemaids
Room
Stain
Rooms
Stains

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The man who says to one, go, and he goeth, and to another, come, and he cometh, has, in most cases, more sense of restraint and difficulty than the man who obeys him.
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The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it.
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The enormous influence of novelty--the way in which it quickens observations, sharpens sensations, and exalts sentiment--is not half enough taken note of by us, and is to me a very sorrowful matter. And yet, if we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will become monotonous.
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Morality does not depend on religion.
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In great countries, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents want to make them into adults. In vile countries, the children are always wanting to be adults and the parents want to keep them children.
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Better a child should be ignorant of a thousand truths than have consecrated in its heart a single lie.
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He who can take no interest in what is small will take false interest in what is great.
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Make yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts. None of us knows what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful thought-proof against all adversity. Bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble histories, faithful sayings, treasure houses of precious and restful thoughts, which care cannot disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty take away from us.
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Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.
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The relative majesty of buildings depends more on the weight and vigour of their masses than any other tribute of their design.
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No day is without its innocent hope.
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Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth.
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We must note carefully what distinction there is between a healthy and a diseased love of change for as it was in healthy love of change that the Gothic architecture rose, it was partly in consequence of diseased love of change that it was destroyed.
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Multitudes think they like to do evil yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world.
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Many thoughts are so dependent upon the language in which they are clothed that they would lose half their beauty if otherwise expressed.
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The actual flower is the plant's highest fulfilment, and are not here exclusively for herbaria, county floras and plant geography: they are here first of all for delight.
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Nothing can be true which is either complete or vacant every touch is false which does not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which represents nothing.
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Color is, in brief terms, the type of love. Hence it is especially connected with the blossoming of the earth and again, with its fruits also, with the spring and fall of the leaf, and with the morning and evening of the day, in order to show the waiting of love about the birth and death of man.
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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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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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