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John Ruskin citations
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John Ruskin, né le 8 février 1819 à Bloomsbury en Londres, mort le 20 janvier 1900 à Coniston est un écrivain, poète, peintre et critique d'art britannique.

Fils unique d'une riche famille, il fut éduqué à domicile, avec une insistance particulière sur l'art et la religion. Il poursuivit son éducation en dilettante, en tant qu'auditeur libre à Oxford. Malgré des problèmes de santé, il y obtint son MA en 1843. Surtout, il s'y lia d'amitié avec nombre d'intellectuels.

Il fut publié dès son adolescence. Grâce à la fortune de sa famille, il put consacrer sa vie à l'écriture. Il devint rapidement célèbre dans les années 1840 grâce à son travail de critique Modern Painters où il proposait une nouvelle façon d'appréhender l'art. Il écrivit ensuite The Seven Lamps of Architecture en 1849 et surtout The Stones of Venice en 1853. Il fit aussi passer ses idées par l'enseignement. Il participa à la création de l'University Museum, donna des cours de dessin au Working Men's College, un établissement de formation continue fondé par ses amis socialistes chrétiens. Il en donna aussi dans une école pour jeunes filles et par correspondance. En 1870, il devint le premier titulaire de la chaire Slade à Oxford.

Son mariage avec Effie Gray annulé pour non-consommation continue à alimenter de nos jours des légendes nombreuses et variées, des suppositions. Effie épousa très vite le peintre John Everett Millais, un membre du mouvement préraphaélite dont Ruskin fut le mécène et le soutien après s'être engagé pour Turner.

✵ 8. février 1819 – 20. janvier 1900   •   Autres noms Джон Рескин
John Ruskin photo
John Ruskin: 136   citations 2   J'aime

John Ruskin citations célèbres

“Le principe des temps modernes […] consiste d'abord à négliger les édifices, puis à les restaurer. Prenez soin de vos monuments et vous n'aurez nul besoin de les restaurer. Quelques feuilles de plomb placées en temps voulu sur la toiture, le balayage opportun de quelques feuilles mortes et de brindilles de bois obstruant un conduit sauveront de la ruine à la fois murailles et toiture. Veillez avec vigilance sur un vieil édifice, gardez-le de votre mieux et par tous les moyens de toute cause de délabrement. Comptez-en les pierres comme vous le feriez pour les joyaux d'une couronne, mettez-y des gardes comme vous en placeriez aux portes d'une ville assiégée; liez-le par le fer quand il se désagrège; soutenez-le à l'aide de poutres quand il s'affaisse; ne vous préoccupez pas de la laideur du secours que vous lui apportez, mieux vaut une béquille que la perte d'un membre; faites-le avec tendresse, avec respect, avec une vigilance incessante, et encore plus d'une génération naîtra et disparaîtra à l'ombre de ses murs. Sa dernière heure enfin sonnera; mais qu'elle sonne ouvertement et franchement, et qu'aucune substitution déshonorante et mensongère ne le vienne priver des devoirs funèbres du souvenir. […] La conservation des monuments du passé n'est pas une simple question de convenance ou de sentiment. Nous n'avons pas le droit d'y toucher. Ils ne nous appartiennent pas. Ils appartiennent en partie à ceux qui les ont construits, en partie à toutes les générations d'hommes qui viendront après nous.”

John Ruskin

Les sept lampes de l'architecture, 1849 (Mercure de France, 1904)

“L'un et l'autre sont sans doute semblables à ces deux poissons décrits par John Ruskin dans son Journal : le premier « se tient en équilibre dans l'eau par un battement régulier des nageoires pectorales. Il ne reste jamais tranquille, mais il n'est jamais agité »; le second, en revanche, « gît lové au fond de la cuvette » mais, poursuit Ruskin, « si je touche à la cuvette, si, d'une manière ou d'une autre, je dérange son sens de la propriété, le voilà soudain dans les quatres coins de la cuvette à la fois, volant comme un fou, fouettant, filant comme une flèche, sautant, se renversant, et m'aspergeant le visage à chaque mouvement : une véritable explosion de furie.»”

John Ruskin

Il est ici question de Chateaubriand et Joubert
Propos rapportés

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“Le soleil nous émerveille, la pluie nous rafraichît, le vent nous réveille, la neige nous exalte ; il n'y a pas de mauvais temps, seulement différents types de temps.”

John Ruskin

John Ruskin: Citations en anglais

“The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as its greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.”

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John Ruskin

Sesame and Lilies, lecture I: Sesame. Of King's Treasuries, section 3 (1864-1865)

“How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty.”

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John Ruskin livre The Seven Lamps of Architecture

Source: The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), Chapter VII: The Lamp of Obedience, section 1.

“Christian faith is a grand cathedral, with divinely pictured windows. Standing without you see no glory, nor can possibly imagine any. Nothing is visible but the merest outline of dusky shapes. Standing within all is clear and denned; every ray of light reveals an army of unspeakable splendors.”

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John Ruskin

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 134.

“Work first and then rest. Work first, and then gaze, but do not use golden ploughshares, nor bind ledgers in enamel.”

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John Ruskin livre The Seven Lamps of Architecture

Source: The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), Chapter IV: The Lamp of Beauty, section 19.

“In great states, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents wanting to make men and women of them. In vile states, the children are always wanting to be men and women, and the parents to keep them children.”

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John Ruskin

Mornings in Florence, part III, section 49 (1875).

“An unimaginative person can neither be reverent nor kind.”

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John Ruskin livre Fors Clavigera

Fors Clavigera, letter xxxiv (October 1873).
Fors Clavigera (1871-1878 and 1880-1884)

“What do you suppose makes all men look back to the time of childhood with so much regret (if their childhood has been, in any moderate degree, healthy or peaceful)? That rich charm, which the least possession had for us, was in consequence of the poorness of our treasures.”

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John Ruskin

Lecture V, section 82.
The Eagle's Nest (1872)

“Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality.”

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John Ruskin

Lecture III
Lectures on Art (1870)

“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.”

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John Ruskin

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 122.

“And thus, in full, there are four classes: the men who feel nothing, and therefore see truly; the men who feel strongly, think weakly, and see untruly (second order of poets); the men who feel strongly, think strongly, and see truly (first order of poets); and the men who, strong as human creatures can be, are yet submitted to influences stronger than they, and see in a sort untruly, because what they see is inconceivably above them. This last is the usual condition of prophetic inspiration.”

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John Ruskin livre Modern Painters

Volume III, part IV, chapter XII (1856).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

“The power which causes the several portions of the plant to help each other, we call life. Much more is this so in an animal. We may take away the branch of a tree without much harm to it; but not the animal's limb. Thus, intensity of life is also intensity of helpfulness — completeness of depending of each part on all the rest. The ceasing of this help is what we call corruption; and in proportion to the perfectness of the help, is the dreadfulness of the loss. The more intense the life has been, the more terrible is its corruption.”

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John Ruskin livre Modern Painters

Volume V, part VIII, chapter 1, section 4 (1860).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

“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 is 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.”

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John Ruskin

Known as the Common Law of Business Balance, this quotation has been widely attributed to Ruskin but has never been sourced to any of his works.
[Shapiro, Fred R., The Yale Book of Quotations, 2006, Yale University Press, New Haven, 657]
Disputed

“I am far more provoked at being thought foolish by foolish people, than pleased at being thought sensible by sensible people; and the average proportion of the numbers of each is not to my advantage.”

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John Ruskin livre Fors Clavigera

Fors Clavigera, letter xxxvii, (1 January 1874).
Fors Clavigera (1871-1878 and 1880-1884)

“Levi's station in life was the receipt of custom; and Peter's, the shore of Galilee; and Paul's, the antechambers of the High- Priest,— which "station in life" each had to leave, with brief notice.”

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John Ruskin

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 438.

“Ask a great money-maker what he wants to do with his money, — he never knows. He doesn't make it to do anything with it. He gets it only that he may get it. "What will you make of what you have got?" you ask. "Well, I'll get more," he says. Just as at cricket, you get more runs. There's no use in the runs, but to get more of them than other people is the game. So all that great foul city of London there, — rattling, growling, smoking, stinking, — a ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork, pouring out poison at every pore, — you fancy it is a city of work? Not a street of it! It is a great city of play; very nasty play and very hard play, but still play.”

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John Ruskin

The Crown of Wild Olive, lecture I: Work, sections 23-24 (1866).

“Labour without joy is base. Labour without sorrow is base. Sorrow without labour is base. Joy without labour is base.”

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John Ruskin

Time and Tide, letter V (1867).

“Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night.”

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John Ruskin

Time and Tide, letter VIII (1867).

“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.”

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John Ruskin livre Modern Painters

Volume III, part IV, chapter XVI (1856).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

“The infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable; not concealed, but incomprehensible; it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure unsearchable sea.”

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John Ruskin livre Modern Painters

Volume II, part III, chapter V (1846).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

“There is but one question ultimately to be asked respecting every line you draw, Is it right or wrong? If right, it most assuredly is not a "free" line, but an intensely continent, restrained and considered line; and the action of the hand in laying it is just as decisive, and just as "free" as the hand of a first-rate surgeon in a critical incision.”

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John Ruskin

Cestus of Aglaia, chapter VI, section 72 (1865-66).

“I have always found that the less we speak of our intentions, the more chance there is of our realizing them.”

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John Ruskin

Preface to the first edition, 1865
The Ethics of the Dust (1875)

“The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.”

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John Ruskin livre The Stones of Venice

Volume III
The Stones of Venice (1853)

“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.”

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John Ruskin livre The Stones of Venice

Volume II, chapter VI, section 62.
The Stones of Venice (1853)

“"The work of men" — and what is that? Well, we may any of us know very quickly, on the condition of being wholly ready to do it. But many of us are for the most part thinking, not of what we are to do, but of what we are to get; and the best of us are sunk into the sin of Ananias, and it is a mortal one — we want to keep back part of the price; and we continually talk of taking up our cross, as if the only harm in a cross was the weight of it — as if it was only a thing to be carried, instead of to be — crucified upon. "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts."”

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John Ruskin

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 405.

“Ignorance, which is contented and clumsy, will produce what is imperfect, but not offensive. But ignorance discontented and dexterous, learning what it cannot understand, and imitating what it cannot enjoy, produces the most loathsome forms of manufacture that can disgrace or mislead humanity.”

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John Ruskin

Lecture V, section 88.
The Eagle's Nest (1872)

“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.”

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John Ruskin livre Modern Painters

Volume III, part IV, chapter VII (1856).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

“Primarily, which is very notable and curious, I observe that men of business rarely know the meaning of the word 'rich'. At least, if they know, they do not in their reasoning allow for the fact, that it is a relative word, implying its opposite 'poor' as positively as the word 'north' implies its opposite 'south'. Men nearly always speak and write as if riches were absolute, and it were possible, by following certain scientific precepts, for everybody to be rich. Whereas riches are a power like that electricity, acting only through inequalities or negations of itself. The force of the guinea you have in your pockets 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; the degree of power it possesses depends accurately upon the need or desire he has for it,— and the art of making yourself rich, in the ordinary mercantile economist's sense, is therefore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbour poor.”

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John Ruskin livre Unto This Last

Essay two: 'The Veins of Wealth'.
Unto This Last (1860)

“There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest numbers of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest, who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.”

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John Ruskin livre Unto This Last

Essay IV: "Ad Valorem," section 77.
Unto This Last (1860)

“Human work must be done thoroughly and honourably because we are now men; whether we ever expect to be angels, or ever were slugs, being practically no matter.”

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John Ruskin livre Fors Clavigera

Fors Clavigera, letter lxxvi (4 March 1877).
Fors Clavigera (1871-1878 and 1880-1884)

“Expression, sentiment, truth to nature, are essential: but all those are not enough. I never care to look at a picture again, if it be ill composed; and if well composed I can hardly leave off looking at it.”

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John Ruskin livre Modern Painters

Volume V, part VIII, chapter I, section 2 (1860).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

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