John Ruskin Quotes - Page 21

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The true grotesque being the expression of the repose or play of a serious mind, there is a false grotesque opposed to it, which is the result of the full exertion of a frivolous one.

John Ruskin

Expression, Play, Mind

John Ruskin (2015). “The Stones of Venice”, p.244, John Ruskin

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The enormous influence of novelty--the way in which it quickens observations, sharpens sensations, and exalts sentiment--is not half enough taken note of by us, and is to me a very sorrowful matter. And yet, if we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will become monotonous.

John Ruskin

Taken, Trying, Matter

John Ruskin (1850). “Modern Painters: pt. 4. Of many things”, p.299

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It is not the church we want, but the sacrifice; not the emotion of admiration, but the act of adoration; not the gift, but the giving.

John Ruskin

Sacrifice, Giving, Religion

John Ruskin (1855). “¬The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, p.17

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God shows us in Himself, strange as it may seem, not only authoritative perfection, but even the perfection of obedience--an obedience to His own laws; and in the cumbrous movement of those unwieldiest of his creatures we are reminded, even in His divine essence, of that attribute of uprightness in the human creature "that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not.

John Ruskin

God, Hurt, Law

John Ruskin (1849). “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, p.37

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The beginning and almost the end of all good law is that everyone shall work for their bread and receive good bread for their work.

John Ruskin

Law, Charity, Bread

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Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night.

John Ruskin

Honesty, Night, Light

'Time and Tide' (1867) letter 8

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Drawing is a means of obtaining and communicating knowledge

John Ruskin

Mean, Drawing, Communicate

John Ruskin (2015). “A Joy Forever”, p.126, John Ruskin

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Science has to do with facts, art with phenomena. To science, phenomena are of use only as they lead to facts; and to art, facts are of use only as they lead to phenomena.

John Ruskin

Art, Science, Use

John Ruskin (1897*). “Stones of Venice”

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When the whole world turns clown, and paints itself red with its own hearts blood instead of vermilion, it is something else than comic.

John Ruskin

War, Heart, Blood

John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.278, University of Virginia Press

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It is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity.

John Ruskin

Work, Two, Healthy

John Ruskin (2013). “The Stones of Venice -: The Sea Stories”, p.169, Cosimo, Inc.

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God has lent us the earth for our life; it is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come after us, and whose names are already written in the book of creation, as to us; and we have no right, by anything that we do or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits which it was in our power to bequeath.

John Ruskin

Book, Names, Benefits

John Ruskin (1907). “The Religion of Ruskin: The Life and Works of John Ruskin; a Biographical and Anthological Study”

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Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth. I find this more and more every day: an infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of all the truly great men. It is sure to involve a relative intensity of disdain towards base things, and an appearance of sternness and arrogance in the eyes of all hard, stupid, and vulgar people

John Ruskin

Art, Stupid, Eye

John Ruskin (1872). “The Two Paths: Being Lectures on Art, and Its Application to Decoration and Manufacture, Delivered in 1858-9”, p.38

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The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as the greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.

John Ruskin

Race, Effort, Praise

John Ruskin (2008). “The Lamp of Memory”, p.43, Penguin UK

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The sculptor does not work for the anatomist, but for the common observer of life and nature.

John Ruskin

Doe, Sculpture, Common

John Ruskin (1848). “Modern Painters”, p.26

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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.

John Ruskin

Light, Darkness, Shadow

John Ruskin (1866). “The seven lamps of architecture”, p.142

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Temperance, in the nobler sense, does not mean a subdued and imperfect energy; it does not mean a stopping short in any good thing, as in love and in faith; but it means the power which governs the most intense energy, and prevents its acting in way but as it ought.

John Ruskin

Mean, Acting, Energy

John Ruskin (1860). “The Stones of Venice...”, p.5

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No small misery is caused by overworked and unhappy people, in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of work itself.

John Ruskin

Dark, Views, People

John Ruskin (1907). “The Religion of Ruskin: The Life and Works of John Ruskin; a Biographical and Anthological Study”

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How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty.

John Ruskin

Men, Liberty, Phantoms

John Ruskin (1861). “Selections from the writings of John Ruskin ... With a portrait”, p.334

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The word "Blue" does not mean the sensation caused by a gentian on the human eye; but it means the power of producing that sensation: and this power is always there, in the thing, whether we are there to experience it or not, and would remain there though there were not a man left on the face of the earth.

John Ruskin

Mean, Eye, Men

John Ruskin, Frederick William Roe (2013). “Selections and Essays”, p.115, Courier Corporation

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All true opinions are living, and show their life by being capable of nourishment; therefore of change. But their change is that of a tree not of a cloud.

John Ruskin

Clouds, Tree, Opinion

John Ruskin (1860). “Modern Painters”, p.11

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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.

John Ruskin

Holiday, Mean, Men

John Ruskin (1873). “Pt. 6-9 of leaf beauty. of cloud beauty. of ideas of relation”, p.233

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Butforme, theAlps and their peoplewerealikebeautiful in their snow, and their humanity; and I wanted, neither for them nor myself, sight of any thrones in heaven but the rocks, or of any spirits in heaven but the clouds.

John Ruskin

Clouds, Rocks, Sight

1851-3 The Stones ofVenice, vol.i, ch.2.

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Of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, scrannel- pipiest, tongs and boniest doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliest of, that eternityof nothing wasthe deadliest.

John Ruskin

Sound, Endless, Soulless

1882 OfWagner's DieMeistersinger. Letter to Mrs Burne-Jones, 30 Jun.

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It is not possible to find a landscape, which if painted precisely as it is, will not make an impressive picture. No one knows, till he has tried, what strange beauty and subtle composition is prepared to his hand by Nature.

John Ruskin

Hands, Landscape, Strange

John Ruskin (1885). “Modern Painters: pt. 5. Of mountain beauty”

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We must note carefully what distinction there is between a healthy and a diseased love of change; for as it was in healthy love of change that the Gothic architecture rose, it was partly in consequence of diseased love of change that it was destroyed.

John Ruskin

Rose, Healthy, Gothic

John Ruskin (1854). “On the Nature of Gothic Architecture: And Herein of the True Functions of the Workman in Art ...”, p.16

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Born: February 8, 1819
Died: January 20, 1900
Occupation: Art critic
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