John Ruskin Quotes About Genius

Quotes about: Genius

• Genius is only a superior power of seeing.

  John Ruskin

  Genius, Seeing, Superiors

• Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others; but of the three, the only quite trustworthy one is the last. The acts of a nation may be triumphant by its good fortune; and its words mighty by the genius of a few of its children: but its art, only by the general gifts and common sympathies of the race.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Children, Book

  St. Mark's Rest preface (1877)

• The whole difference between a man of genius and other men, it has been said a thousand times, and most truly, is that the first remains in great part a child, seeing with the large eyes of children, in perpetual wonder, not conscious of much knowledge--conscious, rather of infinite ignorance, and yet infinite power; a fountain of eternal admiration, delight, and creative force within him meeting the ocean of visible and governable things around him.

  John Ruskin

  Children, Ocean, Ignorance

  John Ruskin (1907). “The stones of Venice”

• Though you may have known clever men who were indolent, you never knew a great man who was so; and when I hear a young man spoken of as giving promise of great genius, the first question I ask about him always is, Does he work?

  John Ruskin

  Clever, Work, Men

  John Ruskin, Christine Roth (2004). “The Two Paths”, p.69, Parlor Press LLC

• All are to be men of genius in their degree,--rivulets or rivers, it does not matter, so that the souls be clear and pure; not dead walls encompassing dead heaps of things, known and numbered, but running waters in the sweet wilderness of things unnumbered and unknown, conscious only of the living banks, on which they partly refresh and partly reflect the flowers, and so pass on.

  John Ruskin

  Running, Sweet, Wall

  John Ruskin (1860). “The Stones of Venice...”, p.58

• There are no laws by which we can write Iliads.

  John Ruskin

  Writing, Law, Genius

  John Ruskin (1873). “The fall”, p.97

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