Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.
Author
John Ruskin
101 quotations
About John Ruskin
John Ruskin was an English polymath – a writer, lecturer, art historian, art critic, draughtsman and philanthropist of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as art, architecture, political economy, education, museology, geology, botany, ornithology, literature, history, and myth.
Read on Wikipedia → Find books by John RuskinMen were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions.
Whether for life or death, do your own work well.
Nearly all the powerful people of this age are unbelievers, the best of them in doubt and misery, the most in plodding hesitation, doing as well as they can, what practical work lies at hand.
The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.
Men cannot not live by exchanging articles, but producing them. They live by work not trade.
Men don't and can't live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don't live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions and take that of laborers Unions.
The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work.
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In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.
Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.
When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.
All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.
All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.
The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.
It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.
There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.
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.
Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.
In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.
The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.
Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.
No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.
The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.
To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.