All JOHN RUSKIN Quotes about “Art”

“Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.”
“Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.”
“Life without industry is guilt. Industry without Art is Brutality.”
“All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.”
“The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.”
“All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.”
“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.”
“Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.”
“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.”
“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.”
“No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.”
“He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.”
“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.”
“Greater completion marks the progress of art, absolute completion usually its decline.”
“Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth.”
“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.”
“All great art is the expression of man's delight in God's work, not his own.”
“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.”
“Nature is always mysterious and secret in her use of means; and art is always likest her when it is most inexplicable.”
“Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves; and art exclusively with things as they affect the human sense and human soul.”
“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.”
“Science studies the relations of things to each other: but art studies only their relations to man.”
“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.”
“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.”

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