John Ruskin - Art Quotes

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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
Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

John Ruskin
In no art is there closer connection between our delight in the work, and our admiration of the workman's mind, than in architecture, and yet we rarely ask for a builder's name.

John Ruskin
Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth.

John Ruskin
Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test.

John Ruskin
Science and art are commonly distinguished by the nature of their actions; the one as knowing, the other as changing, producing, or creating.

John Ruskin
Remember always, in painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter will be your manner, and the fewer your words; and in painting, as in all the arts and acts of life the secret of high success will be found, not in a fretful and various excellence, but in a quiet singleness of justly chosen aim.

John Ruskin
It is not so much in buying pictures as in being pictures, that you can encourage a noble school. The best patronage of art is not that which seeks for the pleasures of sentiment in a vague ideality, nor for beauty of form in a marble image, but that which educates your children into living heroes, and binds down the flights and the fondnesses of the heart into practical duty and faithful devotion.

John Ruskin
If you can draw the stone rightly, everything within reach of art is also within yours.

John Ruskin
The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.

John Ruskin
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.

John Ruskin
He who has learned what is commonly considered the whole art of painting, that is, the art of representing any natural object faithfully, has as yet only learned the language by which his thoughts are to be expressed.

John Ruskin
High art consists neither in altering, nor in improving nature; but in seeking throughout nature for 'whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are pure;' in loving these, in displaying to the utmost of the painter's power such loveliness as is in them, and directing the thoughts of others to them by winning art, or gentle emphasis.

John Ruskin
.. the art of becoming 'rich', in the common sense, is not absolutely nor finally the art of accumulating much money for ourselves, but also of contriving that our neighbour shall have less. In accurate terms, it is 'the art of establishing the maximum inequality in your own favour'.

John Ruskin
All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.

John Ruskin
In all arts or sciences, before we can determine what is just or beautiful in a group, we must ascertain what is desirable in the parts which compose it.

John Ruskin
The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.

John Ruskin
Ornamentation is the principal part of architecture, considered as a subject of fine art.

John Ruskin
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.

John Ruskin
Everything about it [a building] should be natural, and should appear as if the influences and forces which were in operation around it had been too strong to be resisted, and had rendered all efforts of art to check their power, or conceal the evidence of their action, entirely unavailing.

John Ruskin
It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.

John Ruskin
Science studies the relations of things to each other: but art studies only their relations to man.

John Ruskin
The entire vitality of art depends upon its being either full of truth, or full of use; and that, however pleasant, wonderful, or impressive it may be in itself, it must yet be of inferior kind, and tend to deeper inferiority, unless it has clearly one of these main objects, — either to state a true thing, or to adorn a serviceable one.

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 tomorrow, you can never have it today.

John Ruskin
In all base schools of art, the craftsman is dependent for his bread on originality; that is to say, on finding in himself some fragment of isolated faculty, by which his work may be distinct from that of other men. We are ready enough to take delight in our little doings, without any such stimulus; — what must be the effect of the popular applause which continually suggests that the little thing we can separately do is as excellent as it is singular; and what the effect of the bribe, held out to us through the whole of life, to produce — it being also in our peril not to produce — something different from the work of our neighbors?

John Ruskin
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.

John Ruskin
Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, that the sight of them may contribute to his mental health, power, and pleasure.

John Ruskin
We Communists of the old school think that our property belongs to everybody, and everybody's property to us; so of course I thought the Louvre belonged to me as much as to the Parisians, and expected they would have sent word over to me, being an Art Professor, to ask whether I wanted it burnt down. But no message or intimation to that effect ever reached me.

John Ruskin
No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.

John Ruskin
Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality.

John Ruskin