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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.

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
Life
Handle
Spears
Pastoral
Nation
Shepherds
Plough
Race
Slaughter
Spear
Nations
Exquisite
Quiver
Lives
Races
Shepherd
Live
Staff
Bestow
Always
Nearly
Helmet
Never
Innocent
Ornaments
Decorates

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God alone can finish.
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Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless peacocks and lilies for instance.
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It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man.
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There is nothing that this age, from whatever standpoint we survey it, needs more, physically, intellectually, and morally, than thorough ventilation.
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It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.
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The wisest men are wise to the full in death.
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No one can explain how the notes of a Mozart melody, or the folds of a piece of Titian's drapery, produce their essential effects. If you do not feel it, no one can by reasoning make you feel it.
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The entire vitality of art depends upon its being either full of truth, or full of use and that, however pleasant, wonderful, or impressive it may be in itself, it must yet be of inferior kind, and tend to deeper inferiority, unless it has clearly one of these main objects, either to state a true thing, or to adorn a serviceable one.
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I do not believe that any peacock envies another peacock his tail, because every peacock is persuaded that his own tail is the finest in the world. The consequence of this is that peacocks are peaceable birds.
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Other men used their effete faiths and mean faculties with a high moral purpose. The Venetian gave the most earnest faith, and the lordliest faculty, to gild the shadows of an antechamber, or heighten the splendours of a holiday.
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It does not matter what the whip is it is none the less a whip, because you have cut thongs for it out of your own souls.
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It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.
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No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.
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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.
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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.
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