"That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings."
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Quote collection
John Ruskin quotes (page 11 of 31)
606 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"No peace was ever won from fate by subterfuge or argument; no peace is ever in store for any of us, but that which we shall win by victory over shame or sin--victory over the sin that oppresses, as well as over that which corrupts."
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"The art of drawing which is of more real importance to the human race than that of writing...should be taught to every child just as writing is."
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"Never has interest in art been so high, and never has quality been so low."
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"I would rather teach drawing that my pupils may learn to love nature, than teach the looking at nature that they may learn to draw."
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"My mother's influence in molding my character was conspicuous. She forced me to learn daily long chapters of the Bible by heart. To that discipline and patient, accurate resolve I owe not only much of my general power of taking pains, but of the best part of my taste for literature."
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"You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself."
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"Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them."
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"Always stand by form against force."
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"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."
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"The secret of language is the secret of sympathy, and its full charm is possible only to the gentle"
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"No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art."
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"Architecture is the work of nations"
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"The imagination is never governed, it is always the ruling and divine power."
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"No false knight or lying priest ever prospered, I believe, in any age, but certainly not in the dark ones. Men prospered then, only in following openly-declared purposes , and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds."
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"Nearly all our powerful men in this age of the world are unbelievers; the best of them in doubt and misery; the worst in reckless defiance; the plurality, in plodding hesitation, doing, as well as they can, what practical work lies ready to their hands."
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"There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation."
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"Painting with all its technicalities, difficulties, and peculiar ends, is nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing."
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"[For men] to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes - this, nature bade not, - this, God blesses not, - this, humanity for no long time is able to endure."
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"All that is good in art is the expression of one soul talking to another, and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it."
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