John Ruskin
~ 1819 - 1900
John Ruskin was an English art critic, writer, and social thinker, born in 1819. He is known for his significant contributions to art and architecture criticism during the Victorian era, and his writings have influenced the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Arts and Crafts Movement. Ruskin's work also extended to topics such as environmentalism, social reform, and economics.
We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it.
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.
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.
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 first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don't mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.
A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.
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