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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.

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
Firsts
Value
Toys
Human
Strength
Mortal
Humans
Divine
Sent
First
Teach
Lesson
Work
Values
Mortals
Elaborating
Men
Found
Terror
Shortness
Time
Soul
Lessons
Wastes
Ever
Waste
Colossal

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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 painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter your manner.
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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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In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong.
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[For men] to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes - this, nature bade not, - this, God blesses not, - this, humanity for no long time is able to endure.
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If we pretend to have reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves and our work. God's work only may express that, but ours may never have that sentence written upon it, Behold it was very good.
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Pleasure comes through toil, and not by self indulgence and indolence. When one gets to love work, his life is a happy one.
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Every good piece of art... involves first essentially the evidence of human skill, and the formation of an actually beautiful thing by it.
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It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.
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Repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite,--energy.
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You may sell your work, but not your soul.
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When the whole world turns clown, and paints itself red with its own hearts blood instead of vermilion, it is something else than comic.
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Such help as we can give to each other in this world is a debt to each other and the man who perceives a superiority or a capacity in a subordinate, and neither confesses nor assists it, is not merely the withholder of kindness, but the committer of injury.
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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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Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, that the sight of them may contribute to his mental health, power, and pleasure.
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Ignorance, which is contented and clumsy, will produce what is imperfect, but not offensive. But ignorance dis contented and dexterous, learning what it cannot understand, and imitating what it cannot enjoy, produces the most loathsome forms of manufacture that can disgrace or mislead humanity.
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Civilization is the making of civil persons.
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He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.
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Once thoroughly our own, the knowledge ceases to give us pleasure.
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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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