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You cannot have good architecture merely by asking people's advice on occasion. All good architecture is the expression of national life and character and it is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for beauty.

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
Cannot
Merely
Character
National
Good
Asking
Prevalent
Life
Advice
Eager
People
Taste
Occasion
Expression
Produced
Beauty
Occasions
Desire
Architecture

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Do not think of your faults, still less of other's faults look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.
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I am almost sick and giddy with the quantity of things in my head, all tempting and wanting to be worked out.
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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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Value is the life-giving power of anything cost, the quantity of labour required to produce it its price, the quantity of labourwhich its possessor will take in exchange for it.
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The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.
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The imagination is never governed, it is always the ruling and divine power.
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My mother's influence in molding my character was conspicuous. She forced me to learn daily long chapters of the Bible by heart. To that discipline and patient, accurate resolve I owe not only much of my general power of taking pains, but of the best part of my taste for literature.
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Give me some mud off a city crossing, some ochre out of a gravel pit and a little whitening and some coal dust and I will paint you a luminous picture if you give me time to gradate my mud and subdue my dust.
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When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work.
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The sculptor must paint with his chisel half his touches are not to realize, but to put power into, the form. They are touches of light and shadow, and raise a ridge, or sink a hollow, not to represent an actual ridge or hollow, but to get a line of light, or a spot of darkness.
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To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered.
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There is in every animal's eye a dim image and gleam of humanity, a flash of strange light through which their life looks out and up to our great mystery of command over them, and claims the fellowship of the creature if not of the soul.
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You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.
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Cookery means…English thoroughness, French art, and Arabian hospitality it means the knowledge of all fruits and herbs and balms and spices it means carefulness, inventiveness, and watchfulness.
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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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In painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter your manner.
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I am far more provoked at being thought foolish by foolish people, than pleased at being thought sensible by sensible people and the average proportion of the numbers of each is not to my advantage.
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