Quote

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

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All of one's life is music, if one touches the notes rightly, and in time.
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An artist should be well read in the best books, and thoroughly high bred, both in heart and bearing. In a word, he should be fit for the best society, and should keef out of it.
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A nation which lives a pastoral and innocent life never decorates the shepherd's staff or the plough-handle but races who live by depredation and slaughter nearly always bestow exquisite ornaments on the quiver, the helmet, and the spear.
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In one point of view, Gothic is not only the best, but the only rational architecture, as being that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble.
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Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.
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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.
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Like other beautiful things in this world, its end (that of a shaft) is to be beautiful and, in proportion to its beauty, it receives permission to be otherwise useless. We do not blame emeralds and rubies because we cannot make them into heads of hammers.
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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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Labour without joy is base. Labour without sorrow is base. Sorrow without labour is base. Joy without labour is base.
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Better a child should be ignorant of a thousand truths than have consecrated in its heart a single lie.
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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.
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If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses.
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There are no laws by which we can write Iliads.
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A great thing can only be done by a great person and they do it without effort.
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I desire ... to leave this one great fact clearly stated. THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE.
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There are many religions, but there is only one morality.
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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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He thinks by infection, catching an opinion like a cold.
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The history of humanity is not the history of its wars, but the history of its households.
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When God shuts a door, He opens a window.
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