John Ruskin (1819-02-08 – 1900-01-20) was an English author, poet and artist, most famous for his work as art critic and social critic.
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Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm — we who smite like the scythe. What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do. When we are interested in the beauty of a thing, the oftener we can see it the better... My entire delight was in observing without being myself noticed,— if I could have been invisible, all the better. ... this was the essential love of Nature in me, this the root of all that I have usefully become, and the light of all that I have rightly learned.- 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.
- Pre-Raphaelitism, section 1 (1851)
- You talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time: I tell you, Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm — we who smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish — ourselves who consume: we are the mildew, and the flame.
- A Joy for Ever, lecture II, section 74 (1857)
- For certainly it is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them.
- A Joy for Ever, note 6 (1857)
- Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.
- The Two Paths, Lecture II: The Unity of Art, section 54 (1859)
- The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as its greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.
- Sesame and Lilies, lecture I: Of Kings' Treasures, section 3 (1864-1865)
- There is but one question ultimately to be asked respecting every line you draw, Is it right or wrong? If right, it most assuredly is not a "free" line, but an intensely continent, restrained and considered line; and the action of the hand in laying it is just as decisive, and just as "free" as the hand of a first-rate surgeon in a critical incision.
- Cestus of Aglaia, chapter VI, section 72 (1865-66)
- Ask a great money-maker what he wants to do with his money, — he never knows. He doesn't make it to do anything with it. He gets it only that he may get it. "What will you make of what you have got?" you ask. "Well, I'll get more," he says. Just as at cricket, you get more runs. There's no use in the runs, but to get more of them than other people is the game. So all that great foul city of London there, — rattling, growling, smoking, stinking, — a ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork, pouring out poison at every pore, — you fancy it is a city of work? Not a street of it! It is a great city of play; very nasty play and very hard play, but still play.
- The Crown of Wild Olive, lecture I: Work, sections 23-24 (1866)
- A little group of wise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools.
- The Crown of Wild Olive, lecture III: War, section 114 (1866)
- What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.
- The Crown of Wild Olive, lecture IV: The Future of England, section 151 (1866)
- For when we are interested in the beauty of a thing, the oftener we can see it the better; but when we are interested only by the story of a thing, we get tired of hearing the same tale told over and over again, and stopping always at the same point — we want a new story presently, a newer and better one — and the picture of the day, and novel of the day, become as ephemeral as the coiffure or the bonnet of the day. Now this spirit is wholly adverse to the existence of any lovely art. If you mean to throw it aside to-morrow, you can never have it to-day.
- On the Condition of Modern Art, lecture (1867)
- Labour without joy is base. Labour without sorrow is base. Sorrow without labour is base. Joy without labour is base.
- Time and Tide, letter V (1867)
- 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.
- Time and Tide, letter VIII (1867)
- Punishment is the last and least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.
- Notes on the General Principles of Employment for the Destitute and Criminal Classes (1868)
- Engraving is, in brief terms, the Art of Scratch.
- Ariadne Florentina: Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving, with Appendix, lecture I: Definition of the Art of Engraving, section 34 (1872)
- In great states, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents wanting to make men and women of them. In vile states, the children are always wanting to be men and women, and the parents to keep them children.
- Mornings in Florence, part III, section 49 (1875)
- Of all the bête, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-blooded stuff I ever saw on a human stage, that thing last night beat — as far as the acting and story went — and of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, tuneless and scrannelpipiest — tongs and boniest — doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest, so far as the sound went. I never was so relieved, so far as I can remember in my life, by the stopping of any sound — not excepting railway whistles — as I was by the cessation of the cobbler’s bellowing.
- On Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger
- Letter to Georgiana Burne-Jones (1882-06-30)
- My entire delight was in observing without being myself noticed,— if I could have been invisible, all the better. I was absolutely interested in men and their ways, as I was interested in marmots and chamois, in tomtits and trout. If only they would stay still and let me look at them, and not get into their holes and up their heights! The living inhabitation of the world — the grazing and nesting in it, — the spiritual power of the air, the rocks, the waters, to be in the midst of it, and rejoice and wonder at it, and help it if I could, — happier if it needed no help of mine, — this was the essential love of Nature in me, this the root of all that I have usefully become, and the light of all that I have rightly learned.
- Praeterita, volume I, chapter IX (1885-1889)
- There is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
- Quoted by John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury, The Use of Life, chapter IV: "Recreation" (1894)
The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849)
When we build, let us think that we build for ever.- It is the glistening and softly spoken lie; the amiable fallacy; the patriotic lie of the historian, the provident lie of the politician, the zealous lie of the partisan, the merciful lie of the friend, and the careless lie of each man to himself, that cast that black mystery over humanity, through which we thank any man who pierces, as we would thank one who dug a well in a desert.
- Chapter II: The Lamp of Truth, section 1
- I do not believe that ever any building was truly great, unless it had mighty masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow mingled with its surface.
- Chapter III: The Lamp of Power, section 13
- Work first and then rest. Work first, and then gaze, but do not use golden ploughshares, nor bind ledgers in enamel.
- Chapter IV: The Lamp of Beauty, section 19
- When we build, let us think that we build for ever.
- Chapter VI: The Lamp of Memory, section 10
- How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty.
- Chapter VII: The Lamp of Obedience, section 1
The Stones of Venice (1853)
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless: peacocks and lilies, for instance. We blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages.- You were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased with them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn to other account than mere delight. Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless: peacocks and lilies, for instance.
- Volume I, chapter II, section 17
- In old times, men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith; in later times, they used the objects of faith that they might show their powers of painting.
- Volume II, chapter IV, section 103
- Of all God's gifts to the sight of man, colour is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn.
- Volume II, chapter V, section 30
- You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves….On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make him a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the clouds settling upon him.
- Volume II, chapter VI, section 12
- We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that it divided; but the men: — Divided into mere segments of men — broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished, — sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is — we should think that there might be some loss in it also. And the great cry that rises from our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this, — that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads can be met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching, for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach at them, if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can only be met by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labour.
- Volume II, chapter VI, section 16
- We are to remember, in the first place, that the arrangement of colours and lines is an art analogous to the composition of music, and entirely independent of the representation of facts. Good colouring does not necessarily convey the image of anything but itself. It consists of certain proportions and arrangements of rays of light, but not in likeness to anything. A few touches of certain greys and purples laid by a master's hand on white paper will be good colouring; as more touches are added beside them, we may find out that they were intended to represent a dove's neck, and we may praise, as the drawing advances, the perfect imitation of the dove's neck. But the good colouring does not consist in that imitation, but in the abstract qualities and relations of the grey and purple.
- Volume II, chapter VI, section 42
- The world is full of vulgar Purists, who bring discredit on all selection by the silliness of their choice; and this the more, because the very becoming a Purist is commonly indicative of some slight degree of weakness, readiness to be offended, or narrowness of understanding of the ends of things.
- Volume II, chapter VI, section 62
- The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.
- Volume III
- He who has the truth at his heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue.
- Volume III, chapter II, section 99
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Washington Post fourth st., 619-Pete Koutromanos to Debbie Sinclair Ruskin , $839000. 13TH ST., 2715-St. Johns Community Services to Darryl W. Harris, $285000. ...
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Paul Graham JRGS 1959 66 adds The way to the upper floors of The Mill was by a steep wooden ladder forbidden to go there but I
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La plus grande recompense de nos efforts n'est pas ce qu'ils nous rapportent, mais ce qu'ils nous permettent de devenir.
Help with this QUOTE! Anyone!?!?!?
Q. Could you guys explain this quote to me in more depth. "architecture is the work of nations" - John Ruskin I want to use it for my essay, but I don't know how to explain it besides the obvious (that it international) Thanks!
Asked by Lisa B - Mon Aug 4 11:15:39 2008 - - 10 Answers - 0 Comments
A. I think that nations have a great influence in architecture because nations want the best buildings and they want to impress other nations and intimidate them as well
Answered by HITMAN - Mon Aug 4 13:27:22 2008
Q. Could you guys explain this quote to me in more depth. "architecture is the work of nations" - John Ruskin I want to use it for my essay, but I don't know how to explain it besides the obvious (that it international) Thanks!
Asked by Lisa B - Mon Aug 4 11:15:39 2008 - - 10 Answers - 0 Comments
A. I think that nations have a great influence in architecture because nations want the best buildings and they want to impress other nations and intimidate them as well
Answered by HITMAN - Mon Aug 4 13:27:22 2008
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