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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.

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
Spiritual
Defy
Nature
Concerning
Thought
Misunderstanding
Part
Peril
Coherently
May
Despise
Basest
Men
Neither
Expel
Animal
Irrevocably
Possible
Nobly

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You may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does.
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In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong.
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No divine terror will ever be found in the work of the man who wastes a colossal strength in elaborating toys for the first lesson that terror is sent to teach us is, the value of the human soul, and the shortness of mortal time.
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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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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.
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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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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 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.
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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.
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If the design of the building be originally bad, the only virtue it can ever possess will be signs of antiquity.
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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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The greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, nor in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy... which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity.
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There is no wealth but life.
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Architecture concerns itself only with those characters of an edifice which are above and beyond its common use.
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The very cheapness of literature is making even wise people forget that if a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. No book is worth anything which is not worth much nor is it serviceable, until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it.
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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.
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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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Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves.
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The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.
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A forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable, in effect a mass of one species of tree is sublime.
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