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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.

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
Upon
Reached
May
Pretend
Sentences
Work
Satisfaction
Good
Express
Never
Perfection
Degraded
Either
Behold
Written
Sentence

More quotes by John Ruskin

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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.
John Ruskin
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All the other passions do occasional good, but whenever pride puts in its word, everything goes wrong, and what it might really be desirable to do, quietly and innocently, it is mortally dangerous to do, proudly.
John Ruskin
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That man is always happy who is in the presence of something which he cannot know to the full, which he is always going on to know.
John Ruskin
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The noble grotesque involves the true appreciation of beauty.
John Ruskin
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The history of humanity is not the history of its wars, but the history of its households.
John Ruskin
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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
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Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.
John Ruskin
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It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all that he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his readers is sure to skip them.
John Ruskin
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Remember always, in painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter will be your manner, and the fewer your words and in painting, as in all the arts and acts of life the secret of high success will be found, not in a fretful and various excellence, but in a quiet singleness of justly chosen aim.
John Ruskin
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Childhood often holds a truth with its feeble finger, which the grasp of manhood cannot retain,--which it is the pride of utmost age to recover.
John Ruskin
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It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother taught me, that which cost me the most to learn, and which was to my childish mind the most repulsive - Psalm 119 - has now become of all the most precious to me in its overflowing and glorious passion of love for the Law of God.
John Ruskin
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As in the instances of alchemy, astrology, witchcraft, and other such popular creeds, political economy, has a plausible idea at the root of it.
John Ruskin
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I will not kill or hurt any living creature needlessly, nor destroy any beautiful thing, but will strive to save and comfort all gentle life, and guard and perfect all natural beauty upon the earth.
John Ruskin
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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.
John Ruskin
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You do not see with the lens of the eye. You seen through that, and by means of that, but you see with the soul of the eye.
John Ruskin
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There is no music in a “rest” that I know of, but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody.
John Ruskin
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Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.
John Ruskin
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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.
John Ruskin
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Government and cooperation are in all things the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, the laws of death.
John Ruskin
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Which of us?is to do the hard and dirty work for the restand for what pay? Who is to do the pleasant and clean work, and for what pay?
John Ruskin