John Ruskin
English writer and critic John Ruskin shaped Victorian artistic taste through his books
Modern Painters
(1843-1860) and
The Stones of Venice
(1851-1853).
Margaret Ruskin at 54 Hunter Street bore the only child to John James Ruskin. His father, a prosperous, self-made man, a founding partner of Pedro Domecq sherries, collected art and encouraged literary activities of his son, while his mother, a devout evangelical Protestant, early dedicated her son to the service of God and devoutly wished him an Anglican bishop. With few toys, Ruskin, who received his education at home until the age of 12 years in 1831, rarely associated with other children. During his sixth year in 1825, he accompanied his parents on the first of many annual tours of the Continent. His father encouraged him to publish his first poem, On Skiddaw and Derwent Water, at the age of 11 years in 1830, and four years later, in 1834, he published his first prose work, an article on the waters of the Rhine.
In 1836, when he matriculated as a gentleman-commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, he wrote a pamphlet defending the painter Turner against the periodical critics, but at the artist's request he did not publish it. While at Oxford (where his mother had accompanied him) Ruskin associated largely with a wealthy and often rowdy set but continued to publish poetry and criticism; and in 1839 he won the Oxford Newdigate Prize for poetry. The next year, however, suspected consumption led him to interrupt his studies and travel, and he did not receive his degree until 1842, when he abandoned the idea of entering the ministry. This same year he began the first volume of Modern Painters after reviewers of the annual Royal Academy exhibition had again savagely treated Turner's works, and in 1846, after making his first trip abroad without his parents, he published the second volume, which discussed his theories of beauty and imagination within the context of figural as well as landscape painting.
On 10 April 1848 Ruskin married Euphemia Chalmers Gray, and the next year he published The Seven Lamps of Architecture, after which he and Effie set out for Venice. In 1850 he published The King of the Golden River, which he had written for Effie nine years before, and a volume of poetry, and in the following year, during which Turner died and Ruskin made the acquaintance of the Pre-Raphaelites, the first volume of The Stones of Venice. The final two volumes appeared in 1853, the summer of which saw Millais, Ruskin, and Effie together in Scotland, where the artist painted Ruskin's portrait. The next year his wife left him and had their marriage annulled on grounds of non-consummation, after which she later married Millais. During this difficult year, Ruskin defended the Pre-Raphaelites, became close to Rossetti, and taught at the Working Men's College.
In 1855 Ruskin began Academy Notes, his reviews of the annual exhibition, and the following year, in the course of which he became acquainted with the man who later became his close friend, the American Charles Eliot Norton, he published the third and fourth volumes of Modern Painters and The Harbours of England. He continued his immense productivity during the next four years, producing The Elements of Drawing and The Political Economy of Art in 1857, The Elements of Perspective and The Two Paths in 1859, and the fifth volume of Modern Painters and the periodical version of Unto This Last in 1860. During 1858, in the midst of this productive period, Ruskin decisively abandoned the evangelical Protestantism which had so shaped his ideas and attitudes, and he also met Rose La Touche, a young Irish Protestant girl with whom he was later to fall deeply and tragically in love.
Throughout the 186
“When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.”
“If some people see angels where others only see 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.”
“Occult Theft,--Theft which hides itself even from itself, and is legal, respectable, and cowardly,--corrupts the body and soul of man, to the last fibre of them. And the guilty Thieves of Europe, the real sources of all deadly war in it, are the Capitalists”
“You will find it less easy to unroot faults than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do not think of your faults, still less of others faults; in every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong; honor that; rejoice in it and as you can, try to imitate it; and your faults will drop off like dead leaves when their time comes.”
“Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.”
“The majesty of nature depends upon the force of the human spirit.”
“To be taught to write or to speak — but what is the use of speaking if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think — nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, and both true. ”
“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. Whenyou pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you paytoo little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing youbought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. Thecommon law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting alot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is wellto add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you willhave enough to pay for something better.”
“Nothing is ever done beautifully which is donein rival ship: or nobly, which is done in pride.”
“Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity.”
“If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.”
“All great art is the expression of man's delight in God's work, not his own.”
“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”
“A book worth reading is worth owning.”
“Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.”
“Membaca, berpikir, mencintai dan berdoa,hal-hal inilah yang membuat orang berbahagia.”
“Saya yakin ujian pertama bagi orang besar adalah kerendahan hati.”
“Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless.”
“Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.”
“When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.”
“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.”
“When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought is incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.”
“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 to what we spend on our horses?”
“Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.”
“There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey.”
“To speak and act truth with constancy and precision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps as meretorious, as to speak it under intimidation or penalty”
“At least be sure you go to the author to find his meaning, not to find yours.”
“A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel.”
“Education...is a painful, continual and difficult work to be done in kindness, by watching, by warning,... by praise, but above all -- by example.”
“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. ”
“I believe that the first test of a great man is his humility. I don't mean by humility, doubt of his power. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not of them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.”
“There is no wealth but life.”
“Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.”
“The greatest thing a human being ever does in this world is to see something... To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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 highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.”
“All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hours, and the books of all Time.”