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God Shows Us In Himself, Strange As It May Seem, Not Only Authoritative Perfection, But Even The Perfection Of Obedience--an Obedience To His Own Laws; And In The Cumbrous Movement Of Those Unwieldiest Of His Creatures We Are Reminded, Even In His Divine Essence, Of That Attribute Of Uprightness In The Human Creature "that Sweareth To His Own Hurt And Changeth Not.

-John Ruskin

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God Shows Us In

John Ruskin

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God Shows Us In Himself, Strange As It May Seem, Not Only Authoritative Perfection, But Even The Perfection Of Obedience--an Obedience To His Own Laws; And In The Cumbrous Movement Of Those Unwieldiest Of His Creatures We Are Reminded, Even In His Divine Essence, Of That Attribute Of Uprightness In The Human Creature "that Sweareth To His Own Hurt And Changeth Not.

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Shadows Are In Reality, When The Sun Is Shining, The Most Conspicuous Thing In A Landscape, Next To The Highest Lights.

Imperfection Is In Some Sort Essential To All That We Know Of Life. It Is The Sign Of Life In A Mortal Body, That Is To Say, Of A State Of Progress And Change. Nothing That Lives Is, Or Can Be Rigidly Perfect; Part Of It Is Decaying, Part Nascent.

Progress And Change

We Have Seen When The Earth Had To Be Prepared For The Habitation Of Man, A Veil, As It Were, Of Intermediate Being Was Spread Between Him And Its Darkness, In Which Were Joined In A Subdued Measure, The Stability And Insensibility Of The Earth, And The Passion And Perishing Of Mankind.

Creation Of Man

The Whole Difference Between A Man Of Genius And Other Men, It Has Been Said A Thousand Times, And Most Truly, Is That The First Remains In Great Part A Child, Seeing With The Large Eyes Of Children, In Perpetual Wonder, Not Conscious Of Much Knowledge--conscious, Rather Of Infinite Ignorance, And Yet Infinite Power; A Fountain Of Eternal Admiration, Delight, And Creative Force Within Him Meeting The Ocean Of Visible And Governable Things Around Him.

The Divine Mind Is As Visible In Its Full Energy Of Operation On Every Lowly Bank And Mouldering Stone As In The Lifting Of The Pillars Of Heaven, And Settling The Foundation Of The Earth.

See! This Our Fathers Did For Us.

You Can Only Possess Beauty Through Understanding It.

The Word "blue" Does Not Mean The Sensation Caused By A Gentian On The Human Eye; But It Means The Power Of Producing That Sensation: And This Power Is Always There, In The Thing, Whether We Are There To Experience It Or Not, And Would Remain There Though There Were Not A Man Left On The Face Of The Earth.

The Beauty Of The Animal Form Is In Exact Proportion To The Amount Of Moral And Intellectual Virtue Expressed By It.

Beethoven Always Sounds To Me Like The Upsetting Of A Bag Of Nails, With Here And There An Also Dropped Hammer.

That Which Is Required In Order To The Attainment Of Accurate Conclusions Respecting The Essence Of The Beautiful Is Nothing Morethan Earnest, Loving, And Unselfish Attention To Our Impressions Of It.

Always Stand By Form Against Force.

There Is Nothing So Great Or So Goodly In Creation, But That It Is A Mean Symbol Of The Gospel Of Christ, And Of The Things He Has Prepared For Them That Love Him.

Sky Is The Part Of Creation In Which Nature Has Done More For The Sake Of Pleasing Man, More For The Sole And Evident Purpose Of Talking To Him And Teaching Him, Than In Any Other Of Her Works, And It Is Just The Part In Which We Least Attend To Her.

It’s Unwise To Pay Too Much, But It’s Worse To Pay Too Little.

Other Men Used Their Effete Faiths And Mean Faculties With A High Moral Purpose. The Venetian Gave The Most Earnest Faith, And The Lordliest Faculty, To Gild The Shadows Of An Antechamber, Or Heighten The Splendours Of A Holiday.

There Is Nothing That This Age, From Whatever Standpoint We Survey It, Needs More, Physically, Intellectually, And Morally, Than Thorough Ventilation.

All True Opinions Are Living, And Show Their Life By Being Capable Of Nourishment; Therefore Of Change. But Their Change Is That Of A Tree Not Of A Cloud.

He Thinks By Infection, Catching An Opinion Like A Cold.

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.

One Who Does Not Know When To Die, Does Not Know How To Live.

The Sculptor Must Paint With His Chisel; Half His Touches Are Not To Realize, But To Put Power Into, The Form. They Are Touches Of Light And Shadow, And Raise A Ridge, Or Sink A Hollow, Not To Represent An Actual Ridge Or Hollow, But To Get A Line Of Light, Or A Spot Of Darkness.

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.

The Last Act Crowns The Play.

There Is Hardly Anything In The World That Some Man Cannot Make A Little Worse And Sell A Little Cheaper, And The People Who Consider Price Only Are This Man's Lawful Prey.

The History Of Humanity Is Not The History Of Its Wars, But The History Of Its Households.

God Intends No Man To Live In This World Without Working, But It Seems To Me No Less Evident That He Intends Every Man To Be Happy In His Work.

Inequalities Of Wealth, Unjustly Established, Have Assuredly Injured The Nation In Which They Exist During Their Establishment; And, Unjustly Directed, They Injure It Yet More During Their Existence. But Inequalities Of Wealth Justly Established, Benefit The Nation In The Course Of Their Establishment; And, Nobly Used, Aid It Yet More By Their Existence.

In Painting As In Eloquence, The Greater Your Strength, The Quieter Your Manner.

Know Thyself, For Through Thyself Only Thou Canst Know God.

Education Is The Leading Human Souls To What Is Best, And Making What Is Best Out Of Them; And These Two Objects Are Always Attainable Together, And By The Same Means; The Training Which Makes Man Happiest In Themselves Also Makes Them Most Serviceable To Others.

Cursing Is Invoking The Assistance Of A Spirit To Help You Inflict Suffering. Swearing On The Other Hand, Is Invoking, Only The Witness Of A Spirit To An Statement You Wish To Make.

World Suffering

The Work Of Science Is To Substitute Facts For Appearances, And Demonstrations For Impressions.

The Spirit Power Begins In Directing The Animal Power To Other Than Egoistic Ends.

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.

He Who Can Take No Interest In What Is Small Will Take False Interest In What Is Great.

To Know Anything Well Involves A Profound Sensation Of Ignorance.

It Is Far More Difficult To Be Simple Than To Be Complicated.

No Changing Of Place At A Hundred Miles An Hour Will Make Us One Whit Stronger, Or Happier, Or Wiser. There Was Always More In The World Than Man Could See, Walked They Ever So Slowly; They Will See It No Better For Going Fast. The Really Precious Things Are Thought And Sight, Not Pace. It Does A Bullet No Good To Go Fast; And A Man, If He Be Truly A Man, No Harm To Go Slow; For His Glory Is Not At All In Going, But In Being.

The True Work Of A Critic Is Not To Make His Hearer Believe Him, But Agree With Him.

God Alone Can Finish.

Life Without Industry Is Guilt, And Industry Without Art Is Brutality.

All Art Is But Dirtying The Paper Delicately.

Life Being Very Short, And The Quiet Hours Of It Few, We Ought To Waste None Of Them In Reading Valueless Books.

The Force Of The Guinea You Have In Your Pocket Depends Wholly On The Default Of A Guinea In Your Neighbour's Pocket. If He Did Not Want It, It Would Be Of No Use To You.

There Is No Solemnity So Deep, To A Right-thinking Creature, As That Of Dawn.

In Great Countries, Children Are Always Trying To Remain Children, And The Parents Want To Make Them Into Adults. In Vile Countries, The Children Are Always Wanting To Be Adults And The Parents Want To Keep Them Children.

One Of The Worst Diseases To Which The Human Creature Is Liable Is Its Disease Of Thinking.

One Of The Prevailing Sources Of Misery And Crime Is In The Generally Accepted Assumption, That Because Things Have Been Wrong A Long Time, It Is Impossible They Will Ever Be Right.

So Long As We See The Stones And Joints, And Are Not Deceived As To The Points Of Support In Any Piece Of Architecture, We May Rather Praise Than Regret The Dexterous Artifices Which Compel Us To Feel As If There Were Fibre In Its Shafts And Life In Its Branches.

In The Utmost Solitudes Of Nature, The Existence Of Hell Seems To Me As Legibly Declared By A Thousand Spiritual Utterances As That Of Heaven.

He Who Is Not Actively Kind Is Cruel!

A Great Thing Can Only Be Done By A Great Person; And They Do It Without Effort.

Why Is One Man Richer Than Another? Because He Is More Industrious, More Persevering And More Sagacious.

The Essence Of Lying Is In Deception, Not In Words.

Without Mountains The Air Could Not Be Purified, Nor The Flowing Of The Rivers Sustained.

The Repose Necessary To All Beauty Is Repose, Not Of Inanition, Nor Of Luxury, Nor Of Irresolution, But The Repose Of Magnificent Energy And Being; In Action, The Calmness Of Trust And Determination; In Rest, The Consciousness Of Duty Accomplished And Of Victory Won; And This Repose And This Felicity Can Take Place As Well In The Midst Of Trial And Tempest, As Beside The Waters Of Comfort.

If Some People Really See Angels Where Others See Only Empty Space, Let Them Paint The Angels: Only Let Not Anybody Else Think They Can Paint An Angel Too, On Any Calculated Principles Of The Angelic.

It Is Far More Difficult To Be Simple Than To Be Complicated; Far More Difficult To Sacrifice Skill And Easy Execution In The Proper Place, Than To Expand Both Indiscriminately.

This Is The True Nature Of Home - It Is The Place Of Peace; The Shelter, Not Only From All Injury, But From All Terror, Doubt, And Division.

Punishment Is The Last And The Least Effective Instrument In The Hands Of The Legislator For The Prevention Of Crime.

To Watch The Corn Grow, And The Blossoms Set; To Draw Hard Breath Over Ploughshare Or Spade; To Read, To Think, To Love, To Hope, To Pray, — These Are The Things That Make Men Happy.

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.

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.

Production Does Not Consist In Things Laboriously Made, But In Things Serviceably Consumable; And The Question For The Nation Is Not How Much Labour It Employs, But How Much Life It Produces.

There Is No Process Of Amalgamation By Which Opinions, Wrong Individually, Can Become Right Merely By Their Multitude.

It Is Written On The Arched Sky; It Looks Out From Every Star. It Is The Poetry Of Nature; It Is That Which Uplifts The Spirit Within Us.

The Path Of A Good Woman Is Indeed Strewn With Flowers; But They Rise Behind Her Steps, Not Before Them.

The Only Way To Understand These Difficult Parts Of The Bible, Or Even To Approach Them With Safety, Is First To Read And Obey The Easy Ones.

Science Studies The Relations Of Things To Each Other: But Art Studies Only Their Relations To Man.

Science Lives Only In Quiet Places, And With Odd People, Mostly Poor.

To Use Books Rightly, Is To Go To Them For Help; To Appeal To Them When Our Own Knowledge And Power Fail; To Be Led By Them Into Wider Sight And Purer Conception Than Our Own, And To Receive From Them The United Sentence Of The Judges And Councils Of All Time, Against Our Solitary And Unstable Opinions.

Knowledge And Power

All Traveling Becomes Dull In Exact Proportion To Its Rapidity.

It Is Not The Weariness Of Mortality, But The Strength Of Divinity, Which We Have To Recognize In All Mighty Things; And That Is Just What We Now Never Recognize, But Think That We Are To Do Great Things By Help Of Iron Bars And Perspiration. Alas! We Shall Do Nothing That Way But Lose Some Pounds Of Our Own Weight.

Do Not Think It Wasted Time To Submit Yourselves To Any Influence Which May Bring Upon You Any Noble Feeling.

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.

Though You May Have Known Clever Men Who Were Indolent, You Never Knew A Great Man Who Was So; And When I Hear A Young Man Spoken Of As Giving Promise Of Great Genius, The First Question I Ask About Him Always Is, Does He Work?

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.

In General, When The Imagination Is At All Noble, It Is Irresistible, And Therefore Those Who Can At All Resist It Ought To Resist It. Be A Plain Topographer If You Possibly Can; If Nature Meant You To Be Anything Else, She Will Force You To It; But Never Try To Be A Prophet.

Surely Our Clergy Need Not Be Surprised At The Daily Increasing Distrust In The Public Mind Of The Efficacy Of Prayer.

That Admiration Of The 'neat But Not Gaudy,' Which Is Commonly Reported To Have Influenced The Devil When He Painted His Tail Pea Green.

Of All The Pulpits From Which Human Voice Is Ever Sent Forth, There Is None From Which It Reaches So Far As From The Grave.

The Plea Of Ignorance Will Never Take Away Our Responsibilities.

I Do Not Believe That Any Peacock Envies Another Peacock His Tail, Because Every Peacock Is Persuaded That His Own Tail Is The Finest In The World. The Consequence Of This Is That Peacocks Are Peaceable Birds.

It Is Better To Lose Your Pride With Someone You Love Rather Than To Lose That Someone You Love With Your Useless Pride.

Someone You Love

Freedom Is Only Granted Us That Obedience May Be More Perfect.

It Ought To Be Quite As Natural And Straightforward A Matter For A Labourer To Take His Pension From His Parish, Because He Has Deserved Well Of His Parish, As For A Man In Higher Rank To Take His Pension From His Country, Because He Has Deserved Well Of His Country.

No Good Is Ever Done To Society By The Pictorial Representation Of Its Diseases.

All Of One's Life Is Music, If One Touches The Notes Rightly, And In Time.

The Artist's Business Is To Feel, Although He May Think A Little Sometimes... When He Has Nothing Better To Do.

It's Unwise To Pay Too Much, But It's Worse To Pay Too Little. When You Pay Too Much, You Lose A Little Money - That's All. When You Pay Too Little, You Sometimes Lose Everything, Because The Thing You Bought Was Incapable Of Doing The Thing It Was Bought To Do. The Common Law Of Business Balance Prohibits Paying A Little And Getting A Lot - It Can't Be Done. If You Deal With The Lowest Bidder, It Is Well To Add Something For The Risk You Run, And If You Do That You Will Have Enough To Pay For Something Better.

Whatever Merit There Is In Anything That I Have Written Is Simply Due To The Fact That When I Was A Child My Mother Daily Read Me A Part Of The Bible And Daily Made Me Learn A Part Of It By Heart.

We May, Without Offending Any Laws Of Good Taste, Require Of An Architect, As We Do Of A Novelist, That He Should Be Not Only Correct, But Entertaining.

Remember That The Most Beautiful Things In The World Are The Most Useless; Peacocks And Lilies For Instance.

A Little Group Of Wise Hearts Is Better Than A Wilderness Full Of Fools.

There Is No Harm In Anybody Thinking That Christ Is In Bread. The Harm Is In The Expectation Of His Presence In Gunpowder.

We Were Not Sent Into This World To Do Anything Into Which We Cannot Put Our Hearts.

Architecture Concerns Itself Only With Those Characters Of An Edifice Which Are Above And Beyond Its Common Use.

The Sculptor Does Not Work For The Anatomist, But For The Common Observer Of Life And Nature.

No Picture Can Be Good Which Deceives By Its Imitation, For The Very Reason That Nothing Can Be Beautiful Which Is Not True.

If You Want To Work For The Kingdom Of God, And To Bring It, And Enter Into It, There Is Just One Condition To Be First Accepted. You Must Enter Into It As Children, Or Not At All.

Whereas It Has Long Been Known And Declared That The Poor Have No Right To The Property Of The Rich, I Wish It Also To Be Known And Declared That The Rich Have No Right To The Property Of The Poor.

It Is Advisable That A Person Know At Least Three Things, Where They Are, Where They Are Going, And What They Had Best Do Under The Circumstances.

It Is Better To Be Nobly Remembered Than Nobly Born.

There Is Rough Work To Be Done, And Rough Men Must Do It; There Is Gentle Work To Be Done, And Gentlemen Must Do It.

Unless We Perform Divine Service With Every Willing Act Of Our Life, We Never Perform It At All.

We May Live Without Her, And Worship Without Her, But We Cannot Remember Without Her. How Cold Is All History, How Lifeless All Imagery, Compared To That Which The Living Nation Writes, And The Uncorrupted Marble Bears!

Natural Abilities Can Almost Compensate For The Want Of Every Kind Of Cultivation, But No Cultivation Of The Mind Can Make Up For The Want Of Natural Abilities.

A Man Is One Whose Body Has Been Trained To Be The Ready Servant Of His Mind; Whose Passions Are Trained To Be The Servants Of His Will; Who Enjoys The Beautiful, Loves Truth, Hates Wrong, Loves To Do Good, And Respects Others As Himself.

The Finer The Nature, The More Flaws It Will Show Through The Clearness Of It; And It Is A Law Of This Universe That The Best Things Shall Be Seldomest Seen In Their Best Form.

The Only Absolutely And Unapproachably Heroic Element In The Soldier's Work Seems To Be-that He Is Paid Little For It-and Regularly.

Your Art Is To Be The Praise Of Something That You Love. It May Only Be The Praise Of A Shell Or A Stone.

Art Is Not A Study Of Positive Reality, It Is The Seeking For Ideal Truth.

Do Not Think Of Your Faults, Still Less Of Other's Faults; Look For What Is Good And Strong, And Try To Imitate It. Your Faults Will Drop Off, Like Dead Leaves, When Their Time Comes.

Our Respect For The Dead, When They Are Just Dead, Is Something Wonderful, And The Way We Show It More Wonderful Still. We Show It With Black Feathers And Black Horses; We Show It With Black Dresses And Black Heraldries; We Show It With Costly Obelisks And Sculptures Of Sorrow, Which Spoil Half Of Our Beautiful Cathedrals. We Show It With Frightful Gratings And Vaults, And Lids Of Dismal Stone, In The Midst Of The Quiet Grass; And Last, And Not Least, We Show It By Permitting Ourselves To Tell Any Number Of Falsehoods We Think Amiable Or Credible In The Epitaph.

A Thing Is Worth What It Can Do For You, Not What You Choose To Pay For It.

Without The Perfect Sympathy With The Animals Around Them, No Gentleman's Education, No Christian Education, Could Be Of Any Possible Use.

I Believe The Right Question To Ask, Respecting All Ornament, Is Simply This; Was It Done With Enjoyment, Was The Carver Happy While He Was About It?

The Secret Of Language Is The Secret Of Sympathy, And Its Full Charm Is Possible Only To The Gentle

One Evening, When I Was Yet In My Nurse's Arms, I Wanted To Touch The Tea Urn, Which Was Boiling Merrily ... My Nurse Would Have Taken Me Away From The Urn, But My Mother Said "let Him Touch It." So I Touched It - And That Was My First Lesson In The Meaning Of Liberty.

The More Readily We Admit The Possibility Of Our Own Cherished Convictions Being Mixed With Error, The More Vital And Helpful Whatever Is Right In Them Will Become; And No Error Is So Conclusively Fatal As The Idea That God Will Not Allow Us To Err, Though He Has Allowed All Other Men To Do So.

Borrowers Are Nearly Always Ill-spenders, And It Is With Lent Money That All Evil Is Mainly Done And All Unjust War Protracted.

Whenever You See Want Or Misery Or Degradation In This World About You, Then Be Sure Either Industry Has Been Wanting, Or Industry Has Been In Error.

Give An Earnest-hearted, Devoted Girl Any True Work That Will Make Her Active In The Dawn, And Weary At Night, With The Consciousness That Her Fellow-creatures Have Indeed Been The Better For Her Day, And The Powerless Sorrow Of Her Enthusiasm Will Transform Itself Into A Majesty Of Radiant And Beneficent Peace.

Without Seeking, Truth Cannot Be Known At All. It Can Neither Be Declared From Pulpits, Nor Set Down In Articles, Nor In Any Wise Prepared And Sold In Packages Ready For Use. Truth Must Be Ground For Every Man By Itself Out Of It Such, With Such Help As He Can Get, Indeed, But Not Without Stern Labor Of His Own.

You Were Made For Enjoyment, And The World Was Filled With Things Which You Will Enjoy, Unless You Are Too Proud To Be Pleased With Them, Or Too Grasping To Care For What You Can Not Turn To Other Account Than Mere Delight.

It Is, Indeed, Right That We Should Look For, And Hasten, So Far As In Us Lies, The Coming Of The Day Of God; But Not That We Should Check Any Human Effort By Anticipations Of Its Approach. We Shall Hasten It Best By Endeavoring To Work Out The Tasks That Are Appointed For Us Here; And, Therefore, Reasoning As If The World Were To Continue Under Its Existing Dispensation, And The Powers Which Have Just Been Granted To Us Were To Be Continued Through Myriads Of Future Ages.

But I Beg You To Observe That There Is A Wide Difference Between Being Captains Or Governors Of Work, And Taking The Profits Of It. It Does Not Follow, Because You Are General Of An Army, That You Are To Take All The Treasure, Or Land, It Wins; (if It Fight For Treasure Or Land); Neither, Because You Are King Of A Nation, That You Are To Consume All The Profits Of The Nation's Work.

Your Honesty Is Not To Be Based Either On Religion Or Policy.bothyourreligionand Policy Must Be Basedon It.

Men Were Not Intended To Work With The Accuracy Of Tools, To Be Precise And Perfect In All Their Actions.

The World Is Full Of Vulgar Purists, Who Bring Discredit On All Selection By The Silliness Of Their Choice; And This The More, Because The Very Becoming A Purist Is Commonly Indicative Of Some Slight Degree Of Weakness, Readiness To Be Offended, Or Narrowness Of Understanding Of The Ends Of Things.

No Day Is Without Its Innocent Hope.

All The Other Passions Do Occasional Good, But Whenever Pride Puts In Its Word, Everything Goes Wrong, And What It Might Really Be Desirable To Do, Quietly And Innocently, It Is Mortally Dangerous To Do, Proudly.

Now The Basest Thought Possible Concerning Man Is, That He Has No Spiritual Nature; And The Foolishest Misunderstanding Of Him Possible Is, That He Has, Or Should Have, No Animal Nature. For His Nature Is Nobly Animal, Nobly Spiritual,--coherently And Irrevocably So; Neither Part Of It May, But At Its Peril, Expel, Despise, Or Defy The Other.

So Far As I Have Myself Observed, The Distinctive Character Of A Child Is To Live Always In The Tangible Present.

I Used To Lie Down On The Grass And Draw The Blades As They Grew - Until Every Square Foot Of Meadow, Or Mossy Bank, Became A Possession To Me.

When I Have Been Unhappy, I Have Heard An Opera... And It Seemed The Shrieking Of Winds; When I Am Happy, A Sparrow's Chirp Is Delicious To Me. But It Is Not The Chirp That Makes Me Happy, But I That Make It Sweet.

No Architecture Is So Haughty As That Which Is Simple.

The Training Which Makes Men Happiest In Themselves ... Also Makes Them Most Serviceable To Others

As Long As There Are Cold And Nakedness In The Land Around You, So Long Can There Be No Question At All But That Splendor Of Dress Is A Crime.

If A Book Is Worth Reading, It Is Worth Buying.

It Takes A Great Deal Of Living To Get A Little Deal Of Learning.

What Do We, As A Nation, Care About Books? How Much Do You Think We Spend Altogether On Our Libraries, Public Or Private, As Compared With What We Spend On Our Horses?

We Are Foolish, And Without Excuse Foolish, In Speaking Of The Superiority Of One Sex To The Other, As If They Could Be Compared In Similar Things! Each Has What The Other Has Not; Each Completes The Other; They Are In Nothing Alike And The Happiness And Perfection Of Both Depend On Each Asking And Receiving From The Other What The Other Only Can Give.

Nature Is Painting For Us, Day After Day, Pictures Of Infinite Beauty.

It Is Strange That Of All The Pieces Of The Bible Which My Mother Taught Me, That Which Cost Me The Most To Learn, And Which Was To My Childish Mind The Most Repulsive - Psalm 119 - Has Now Become Of All The Most Precious To Me In Its Overflowing And Glorious Passion Of Love For The Law Of God.

When We Build, Let Us Think That We Build Forever. Let It Not Be For Present Delight Nor For Our Use Alone. Let It Be Such Work As Our Descendants Will Look Upon With Praise And Thanksgiving In Their Hearts.

Dream Lofty Dreams, And As You Dream, So Shall You Become.

The Greatest Efforts Of The Race Have Always Been Traceable To The Love Of Praise, As The Greatest Catastrophes To The Love Of Pleasure.

To Give Alms Is Nothing Unless You Give Thought Also.

He That Would Be Angry And Sin Not, Must Not Be Angry With Anything But Sin.

[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.

Work First And Then Rest. Work First, And Then Gaze, But Do Not Use Golden Ploughshares, Nor Bind Ledgers In Enamel.

I Have Not Written In Vain If I Have Heretofore Done Anything Towards Diminishing The Reputation Of The Renaissance Landscape Painting.

Landscape Painting

Whether We Force The Man's Property From Him By Pinching His Stomach, Or Pinching His Fingers, Makes Some Difference Anatomically; Morally, None Whatsoever.

What Is Poetry? The Suggestion, By The Imagination, Of Noble Grounds For The Noble Emotions.

I've Seen The Rhine With Younger Wave, O'er Every Obstacle To Rave. I See The Rhine In His Native Wild Is Still A Mighty Mountain Child.

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.

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

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.

No Individual Rain Drop Ever Considers Itself Responsible For The Flood.

An Unimaginative Person Can Neither Be Reverent Nor Kind.

You Cannot Get Anything Out Of Nature Or From God By Gambling; Only Out Of Your Neighbor.

Science Is The Knowledge Of Constant Things, Not Merely Of Passing Events, And Is Properly Less The Knowledge Of General Laws Than Of Existing Facts.

Wherever Men Are Noble, They Love Bright Colour; And Wherever They Can Live Healthily, Bright Colour Is Given Them—in Sky, Sea, Flowers, And Living Creatures.

There Was A Rocky Valley Between Buxton And Bakewell?divine As The Vale Of Tempe; You Might Have Seen The Gods There Morning And Eveningapollo And The Sweet Muses Of The Light? You Enterprised A Railroad?you Blasted Its Rocks Away? And, Now, Every Fool In Buxton Can Be At Bakewell In Half-an-hour, And Every Fool In Bakewell At Buxton.

The Child Who Desires Education Will Be Bettered By It; The Child Who Dislikes It Disgraced.

Likes And Dislikes

Labour Without Joy Is Base. Labour Without Sorrow Is Base. Sorrow Without Labour Is Base. Joy Without Labour Is Base.

If You Do Not Wish For His Kingdom Do Not Pray For It. But If You Do You Must Do More Than Pray For It, You Must Work For It.

Disorder In A Drawing-room Is Vulgar; In An Antiquary's Study, Not; The Black Battle-stain On A Soldier's Face Is Not Vulgar, But The Dirty Face Of A Housemaid Is.

I Do Not Believe That Ever Any Building Was Truly Great, Unless It Had Mighty Masses, Vigorous And Deep, Of Shadow Mingled With Its Surface.

The Man Who Can See All Gray, And Red, And Purples In A Peach, Will Paint The Peach Rightly Round, And Rightly Altogether. But The Man Who Has Only Studied Its Roundness May Not See Its Purples And Grays, And If He Does Not Will Never Get It To Look Like A Peach; So That Great Power Over Color Is Always A Sign Of Large General Art-intellect.

We Have Much Studied And Much Perfected, Of Late, The Great Civilized Invention Of The Division Of Labour; Only We Give It A False Name. It Is Not, Truly Speaking, The Labour That Is Divided; But The Men.

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.

Let Us Reform Our Schools, And We Shall Find Little Reform Needed In Our Prisons.

The Virtue Of The Imagination Is Its Reaching, By Intuition And Intensity, A More Essential Truth Than Is Seen At The Surface Of Things.

I Tell You (dogmatically, If You Like To Call It So, Knowing It Well) A Square Inch Of Man's Engraving Is Worth All The Photographs That Were Ever Dipped In Acid... Believe Me, Photography Can Do Against Line Engraving Just What Madame Tussaud's Wax-work Can Do Against Sculpture. That And No More. (1865)

Cookery Means…english Thoroughness, French Art, And Arabian Hospitality; It Means The Knowledge Of All Fruits And Herbs And Balms And Spices; It Means Carefulness, Inventiveness, And Watchfulness.

What Is Really Desired, Under The Name Of Riches, Is Essentially, Power Over Men ... This Power ... Is In Direct Proportion To The Poverty Of The Men Over Whom It Is Exercised, And In Inverse Proportion To The Number Of Persons Who Are As Rich As Ourselves.

I Fear Uniformity. You Cannot Manufacture Great Men Any More Than You Can Manufacture Gold.

Milton Saw Not, And Beethoven Heard Not, But The Sense Of Beauty Was Upon Them, And They Fain Must Speak.

To Invent A Story, Or Admirably And Thoroughly Tell Any Part Of A Story, It Is Necessary To Grasp The Entire Mind Of Every Personage Concerned In It, And Know Precisely How They Would Be Affected By What Happens; Which To Do Requires A Colossal Intellect: But To Describe A Separate Emotion Delicately, It Is Only Needed That One Should Feel It Oneself; And Thousands Of People Are Capable Of Feeling This Or That Noble Emotion, For One Who Is Able To Enter Into All The Feelings Of Someone Sitting On The Other Side Of The Table.

God Gives Us Always Strength Enough, And Sense Enough, For What He Wants Us To Do; If We Either Tire Ourselves Or Puzzle Ourselves, It Is Our Own Fault.

Men Cannot Not Live By Exchanging Articles, But Producing Them. They Live By Work Not Trade.

Do Justice To Your Brother (you Can Do That, Whether You Love Him Or Not), And You Will Come To Love Him. But Do Injustice To Him Because You Don't Love Him, And You Will Come To Hate Him.

Imaginary Evils Soon Become Real One By Indulging Our Reflections On Them.

Of All The Affected, Sapless, Soulless, Beginningless, Endless, Topless, Bottomless, Topsiturviest, Scrannel- Pipiest, Tongs And Boniest Doggerel Of Sounds I Ever Endured The Deadliest Of, That Eternityof Nothing Wasthe Deadliest.

It Is Not The Church We Want, But The Sacrifice; Not The Emotion Of Admiration, But The Act Of Adoration; Not The Gift, But The Giving.

If You Can Draw The Stone Rightly, Everything Within Reach Of Art Is Also Within Yours.

Greatness Is The Aggregation Of Minuteness; Nor Can Its Sublimity Be Felt Truthfully By Any Mind Unaccustomed To The Affectionate Watching Of What Is Least.

The Scholar Is Early Acquainted With Every Department Of The Impossible.

Humanity And Immortality Consist Neither In Reason, Nor In Love; Not In The Body, Nor In The Animation Of The Heart Of It, Nor In The Thoughts And Stirrings Of The Brain Of It;--but In The Dedication Of Them All To Him Who Will Raise Them Up At The Last Day.

The Great Cry That Rises From Our Manufacturing Cities, Louder Than Their Furnace Blast, Is All In Very Deed For This, That We Manufacture Everything There Except Men; We Blanch Cotton, And Strengthen Steel, And Refine Sugar, And Shape Pottery; But To Brighten, To Strengthen, To Refine, Or To Form A Single Living Spirit, Never Enters Into Our Estimate Of Advantages.

True Taste Is Forever Growing, Learning, Reading, Worshipping, Laying Its Hand Upon Its Mouth Because It Is Astonished, Casting Its Shoes From Off Its Feet Because It Finds All Ground Holy.

I Believe That There Is No Test Of Greatness In Periods, Nations Or Men More Sure Than The Development, Among Them Or In Them, Of A Noble Grotesque, And No Test Of Comparative Smallness Or Limitation, Of One Kind Or Another, More Sure Than The Absence Of Grotesque Invention, Or Incapability Of Understanding It.

If The Design Of The Building Be Originally Bad, The Only Virtue It Can Ever Possess Will Be Signs Of Antiquity.

If The Thing Is Impossible, You Need Not Trouble Yourselves About It; If Possible, Try For It.

Life Is A Magic Vase Filled To The Brim, So Made That You Cannot Dip From It Nor Draw From It; But It Overflows Into The Hand That Drops Treasures Into It. Drop In Malice And It Overflows Hate; Drop In Charity And It Overflows Love.

All The Best Things And Treasures Of This World Are Not To Be Produced By Each Generation For Itself; But We Are All Intended, Not To Carve Our Work In Snow That Will Melt, But Each And All Of Us To Be Continually Rolling A Great White Gathering Snow-ball, Higher And Higher, Larger And Larger, Along The Alps Of Human Power.

Every Good Piece Of Art... Involves First Essentially The Evidence Of Human Skill, And The Formation Of An Actually Beautiful Thing By It.

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