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I believe that there is no test of greatness in periods, nations or men more sure than the development, among them or in them, of a noble grotesque, and no test of comparative smallness or limitation, of one kind or another, more sure than the absence of grotesque invention, or incapability of understanding it.

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
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Temperance, in the nobler sense, does not mean a subdued and imperfect energy it does not mean a stopping short in any good thing, as in love and in faith but it means the power which governs the most intense energy, and prevents its acting in way but as it ought.
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Without mountains the air could not be purified, nor the flowing of the rivers sustained.
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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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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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Give me some mud off a city crossing, some ochre out of a gravel pit and a little whitening and some coal dust and I will paint you a luminous picture if you give me time to gradate my mud and subdue my dust.
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The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.
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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.
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How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty.
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Science has to do with facts, art with phenomena. To science, phenomena are of use only as they lead to facts and to art, facts are of use only as they lead to phenomena.
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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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It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.
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... the weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which, worthily used, will be a gift also to his race forever.
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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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A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.
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Order and system are nobler things than power.
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This is the true nature of home - it is the place of Peace the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division.
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Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect in its own bad way.
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To do your own work well, whether it be for life or death.
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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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Surely our clergy need not be surprised at the daily increasing distrust in the public mind of the efficacy of prayer.
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