Quotes John Ruskin - page 4
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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.
If we pretend to have reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves and our work. God's work only may express that, but ours may never have that sentence written upon it, Behold it was very good.
Make yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts. None of us knows what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful thought-proof against all adversity. Bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble histories, faithful sayings, treasure houses of precious and restful thoughts, which care cannot disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty take away from us.
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There is large difference between indolent impatience of labor and intellectual impatience of delay, large difference between leaving things unfinished because we have more to do or because we are satisfied with what we have done.
If it is the love of that which your work represents--if, being a landscape painter, it is love of hills and trees that moves you--if, being a figure painter, it is love of human beauty, and human soul that moves you--if, being a flower or animal painter, it is love, and wonder, and delight in petal and in limb that move you, then the Spirit is upon you, and the earth is yours, and the fullness thereof.
It is a shallow criticism that would define poetry as confined to literary productions in rhyme and meter rhythm. The written poem is only poetry talking, and the statue, the picture, and the musical composition are poetry acting. Milton and Goethe, at their desks, were not more truly poets than Phidias with his chisel, Raphael at his easel, or deaf Beethoven bending over his piano, inventing and producing strains, which he himself could never hope to hear.
But if, indeed, there be a nobler life in us than in these strangely moving atoms; if, indeed, there is an eternal difference between the fire which inhabits them, and that which animates us,--it must be shown, by each of us in his appointed place, not merely in the patience, but in the activity of our hope, not merely by our desire, but our labor, for the time when the dust of the generations of men shall be confirmed for foundations of the gates of the city of God.
Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.
What we think or what we know or what we believe is in the end of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do
There is no action so slight or so mean but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled thereby.
Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.
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.
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.
There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.
You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.
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There is no process of amalgamation by which opinions, wrong individually, can become right merely by their multitude.
