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The highest thoughts are those which are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any composition and praise to which it is entitled are in exact proportion to its dependency of language or expression.

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
Dignity
Praise
Highest
Dependency
Thoughts
Exact
Expression
Composition
Least
Entitled
Language
Dependent
Proportion

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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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Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.
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To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.
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Milton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak.
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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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Not without design does God write the music of our lives.
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The truths of nature are one eternal change, one infinite variety. There is no bush on the face of the globe exactly like another bush there are no two trees in the forest whose boughs bend into the same network, nor two leaves on the same tree which could not be told one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike.
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Failure is less attributable to either insufficiency of means or impatience of labours than to a confused understanding of the thing actually to be done.
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Fit yourself for the best society, and then, never enter it.
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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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Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.
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Nothing can be true which is either complete or vacant every touch is false which does not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which represents nothing.
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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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Our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves what shall be true for the future.
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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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The art of drawing which is of more real importance to the human race than that of writing...should be taught to every child just as writing is.
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In all things that live there are certain irregularities, and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry.
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Borrowers are nearly always ill-spenders, and it is with lent money that all evil is mainly done and all unjust war protracted.
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I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting.
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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.
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