John Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskinwas the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy. His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. Ruskin penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth8 February 1819
Mountains are to the rest of the body of the earth, what violent muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and tendons of its anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with force and convulsive energy, full of expression, passion, and strength.
Death is not a journey into an unknown land; it is a voyage home. We are going, not to a strange country, but to our fathers house.
The secret of language is the secret of sympathy, and its full charm is possible only to the gentle
Once thoroughly our own knowledge ceases to give us pleasure.
Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor.
Wherever men are noble, they love bright colour; and wherever they can live healthily, bright colour is given them—in sky, sea, flowers, and living creatures.
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.
Freedom is only granted us that obedience may be more perfect.
Obey something, and you will have a chance to learn what is best to obey. But if you begin by obeying nothing, you will end by obeying the devil and all his invited friends.
I had no companions to quarrel with, nobody to assist, and nobody to thank... the evil consequence of all this was not, however, what might perhaps have been expected, that I grew up selfish or non affectionate; but that, when affection did come, it came with a violence utterly rampant and unmanageable.
What right have you to take the word wealth, which originally meant well-being, and degrade and narrow it by confining it to certain sorts of material objects measured by money.
When men do not love their hearth, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have dishonoured both ... Our God is a house-hold God, as well as a heavenly one; He has an altar in every man's dwelling.
Kind hearts are the garden, kind thoughts are the roots, kind words are the blossoms, kind deeds are the fruit.
No one can become rich by the efforts of only their toil, but only by the discovery of some method of taxing the labor of others.