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Our purity of taste is best tested by its universality, for if we can only admire this thing or that, we maybe use that our cause for liking is of a finite and false nature.

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
Taste
Cause
Universality
Causes
Liking
Maybe
Finite
Use
Tested
Nature
Purity
Best
Admire
Thing
False

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To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.
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It does not matter what the whip is it is none the less a whip, because you have cut thongs for it out of your own souls.
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You may sell your work, but not your soul.
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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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Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer.
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Come, ye cold winds, at January's call, On whistling wings, and with white flakes bestrew The earth.
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I am far more provoked at being thought foolish by foolish people, than pleased at being thought sensible by sensible people and the average proportion of the numbers of each is not to my advantage.
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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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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.
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In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.
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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.
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They are the weakest-minded and the hardest-hearted men that most love change.
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And besides the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one distribute the earth as you will, the principal question remains inexorable, Who is to dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay?
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I would rather teach drawing that my pupils may learn to love nature, than teach the looking at nature that they may learn to draw.
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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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When men do not love their hearth, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have dishonoured both ... Our God is a house-hold God, as well as a heavenly one He has an altar in every man's dwelling.
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The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.
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There was a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell?divine as the vale of Tempe you might have seen the gods there morning and eveningApollo and the sweet Muses of the Light? You enterprised a railroad?you blasted its rocks away? And, now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half-an-hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton.
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The imagination is never governed, it is always the ruling and divine power.
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It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.
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