All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
The greatest minds are marked by nothing more distinctly than an inconceivable humility, and acceptance of work or instruction in any form, and from any quarter. They will learn from everybody, and do anything that anybody asks, so long as it involves only toil, or what other men would think degradation.
John Ruskin
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
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.
John Ruskin
In painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter your manner.
John Ruskin
In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.
John Ruskin
A little group of wise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools.
John Ruskin
Ignorance, which is contented and clumsy, will produce what is imperfect, but not offensive. But ignorance discontented and dexterous, learning what it cannot understand, and imitating what it cannot enjoy, produces the most loathsome forms of manufacture that can disgrace or mislead humanity.
John Ruskin
The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as its greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.
John Ruskin
The infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable; not concealed, but incomprehensible; it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure unsearchable sea.
John Ruskin
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.
John Ruskin