John Ruskin Quotes About Art

Quotes about: Art

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

  John Ruskin

  Art, Men, Hands

  'The Two Paths' (1859) lecture 2

• Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

  John Ruskin

  Positive, Art, Reality

• Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality.

  John Ruskin

  Life, Art, Political

  "Lectures on Art: Delivered Before the University of Oxford in Hilary Term, 1870".

• All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Drawing, Paper

• A man is born an artist as a hippopotamus is born a hippopotamus; and you can no more make yourself one than you can make yourself a giraffe.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Men, Giraffe

  John Ruskin (1894). “Letters on Art and Literature”

• All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Soul, Literature

  John Ruskin (2015). “The Stones of Venice”, p.312, John Ruskin

• The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Thoughtful, Color

  1851-3 The Stones ofVenice, vol.ii, ch.5.

• Nature is always mysterious and secret in her use of means; and art is always likest her when it is most inexplicable.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Nature, Mean

  John Ruskin (1873). “Pt. 1-2. of general principles and of truth”, p.36

• Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Book, Writing

  St. Mark's Rest preface (1877)

• 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

  Art, Children, Real

• 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

  Art, Future, Men

  John Ruskin (1849). “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, p.171

• 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

  Art, Work, Perfect

  John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.183, University of Virginia Press

• He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Ideas, Numbers

  Modern Painters vol. 1, pt. 1, ch. 2 (1843)

• No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Architecture, Painter

  'Lectures on Architecture and Painting' (1853) 61, addenda

• 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

  Art, Children, Book

  St. Mark's Rest preface (1877)

• Greater completion marks the progress of art, absolute completion usually its decline.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Progress, Decline

  John Ruskin (1849). “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, p.120

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

  John Ruskin

  Art, Truth, Firsts

  John Ruskin (1872). “The Two Paths: Being Lectures on Art, and Its Application to Decoration and Manufacture, Delivered in 1858-9”, p.38

• I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Pain, Two

  Fors Clavigera Letter 79, 18 June 1877. This comment was the basis for Whistler's 1878 libel suit against Ruskin.

• All great art is the expression of man's delight in God's work, not his own.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Inspirational Life, Men

  John Ruskin (1871). “Selections from the Writings of John Ruskin”, p.331

• What does cookery mean? It means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe,
  and of Calypso, and Sheba. It means knowledge of all herbs, and fruits, and
  balms and spices... It means the economy of your great-grandmother and the
  science of modern chemistry, and French art, and Arabian hospitality. It
  means, in fine, that you are to see imperatively that everyone has something
  nice to eat.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Nice, Food

• 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

  Art, Greatness, Expression

  John Ruskin (1853). “The Stones of Venice: The fall”, p.188

• 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.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Talking, Piano

• 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

  Art, Winning, Lovely

  John Ruskin (1859). “Modern Painters: (pt.4) Modern painters of many things”, p.35

• Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves; and art exclusively with things as they affect the human sense and human soul.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Science, Soul

  John Ruskin (2013). “The Stones of Venice -: The Fall”, p.36, Cosimo, Inc.

• Science has to do with facts, art with phenomena. To science, phenomena are of use only as they lead to facts; and to art, facts are of use only as they lead to phenomena.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Science, Use

  John Ruskin (1897*). “Stones of Venice”

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