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 The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded...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
What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?
The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.
Modern travelling is not travelling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.
Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.
The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.
Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.
It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.
Nothing is ever done beautifully which is done in rivalship: or nobly, which is done in pride.
Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are.
Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.
It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.
The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work.
To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.
It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately.