Quote

Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to oar moral nature in its purity and perfection.

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
Possible
Purity
Pleasure
Attractive
Moral
Material
Perfect
Perfection
Nature
Materials
Oar
Taste
Sources
Source
Receiving
Greatest
Faculty

More quotes by John Ruskin

Image
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.
John Ruskin
Image
Come, ye cold winds, at January's call, On whistling wings, and with white flakes bestrew The earth.
John Ruskin
Image
We may live without her, and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her. How cold is all history, how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears!
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
Absolute ugliness is admitted as rarely as perfect beauty but degrees of it more or less distinct are associated with whatever has the nature of death and sin, just as beauty is associated with what has the nature of virtue and of life.
John Ruskin
Image
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.
John Ruskin
Image
When the whole world turns clown, and paints itself red with its own hearts blood instead of vermilion, it is something else than comic.
John Ruskin
Image
The world is full of vulgar Purists, who bring discredit on all selection by the silliness of their choice and this the more, because the very becoming a Purist is commonly indicative of some slight degree of weakness, readiness to be offended, or narrowness of understanding of the ends of things.
John Ruskin
Image
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.
John Ruskin
Image
Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker and there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test.
John Ruskin
Image
There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.
John Ruskin
Image
The proof of a thing's being right is that it has power over the heart that it excites us, wins us, or helps us.
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
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.
John Ruskin
Image
Without the perfect sympathy with the animals around them, no gentleman's education, no Christian education, could be of any possible use.
John Ruskin
Image
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.
John Ruskin
Image
Not without design does God write the music of our lives.
John Ruskin
Image
Your labor only may be sold, your soul must not.
John Ruskin
Image
Drunkenness is not only the cause of crime, but it is crime and if any encourage drunkenness for the sake of the profit derived from the sale of drink, they are guilty of a form of moral assassination as criminal as any that has ever been practiced by the braves of any country or of any age.
John Ruskin
Image
No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.
John Ruskin