Frases de John Ruskin

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“A maior recompensa pelo nosso trabalho não é o que nos pagam por ele, mas aquilo em que ele nos transforma.”

“Somente quando encontramos o amor, é que descobrimos o que nos faltava na vida.”

“Reformemos as nossas escolas, e não teremos que reformar grande coisa nas nossas prisões.”

“Acho que a primeira prova da grandeza de um homem é a sua humildade.”

“Podes ganhar a paz ou comprá-la; ganhá-la-ás, resistindo ao mal; comprá-la-ás, aceitando o compromisso com o mal.”

“Para a saúde da mente e do corpo, os homens deveriam enxergar com seus próprios olhos, falar sem megafone, caminhar com sobre os próprios pés em vez de andar sobre rodas, trabalhar e lutar com seus próprios braços, sem artefatos ou máquinas.”

“O homem vendido por outro pode não ser escravo; o que se vendeu a si mesmo, esse é o escravo absoluto.”

“Vigiar para que germinem as sementes ou desabrochem as flores, arfar no arado, ler, pensar, amar, orar; eis a felicidade dos homens.”

“Quando os homens não olham para a natureza, julgam sempre poder melhorá-la.”

“O que Pensamos ou no que Acreditamos não tem Muita Importância! A Única coisa Relevante é o que Fazemos!”

“A felicidade consiste em preparar o futuro, pensando no presente e esquecendo o passado se foi triste.”

“Para que as pessoas possam ser felizes em seus trabalhos, essas três coisas são necessárias: Elas devem ser adequadas ao trabalho; elas não devem trabalhar demais; e elas devem ter uma sensação de sucesso neste trabalho.”

“Lembra-te de que as coisas mais belas do mundo são também as mais inúteis: os pavões e os lírios, por exemplo.”

“A esperança deixa de ser felicidade quando acompanhada de impaciência.”

“Sê justo com alguém e acabarás por amá-lo; mas, se fores injusto com ele, acabarás por odiá-lo.”

“Há uma enorme dificuldade em abrir os olhos das pessoas. Comovê-las e destroçar-lhes a alma, é fácil; difícil é fazer com que a luz lhes penetre o cérebro. Que lucro existe em lhes mudar os sentimentos, se continuam sendo idiotas?”

“Algo como o mau tempo, na verdade, não existe. Existem, sim, vários tipos de bom tempo.”

“Os livros podem ser divididos em dois grupos: aqueles do momento e aqueles de sempre.”

“A qualidade nunca se obtém por acaso; ela é sempre o resultado do esforço inteligente.”

“O resultado final e o objeto da riqueza é produzir o maior número possível de criaturas humanas de pulmões sadios, olhos brilhantes e coração feliz.”

“O caminho da mulher honesta está juncado de flores; mas estas crescem atrás dos seus passos e não na frente.”

“Ao despontar do dia, a melhor oração consiste em pedirmos a aventura de não perder nenhum dos seus instantes.”

“Ninguém que não seja um grande escultor ou pintor pode ser um arquitecto. Se não é um escultor ou pintor, apenas pode ser um construtor.”

“Não manda bem quem tem a ânsia de mandar.”

“As grandes nações escrevem a sua autobiografia em três manuscritos: o livro dos seus feitos, o livro das suas palavras e o livro da sua arte.”

“De todas as coisas que possas usar, a tua expressão é, seguramente, a mais importante.”

“The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.”

“All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.”

“When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.”

“There is no wealth but life.”

“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.”

“Let every dawn of morning be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.”

“Remember that the most beautiful things in life are often the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.”

“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.”

“Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort. There must be the will to produce a superior thing.”

“You can only possess beauty through understanding it.”

“Education… is a painful, continual and difficult work to be done in kindness, by watching, by warning,… by praise, but above all -- by example.”

“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.”

“Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.”

“It is not possible to find a landscape, which if painted precisely as it is, will not make an impressive picture. No one knows, till he has tried, what strange beauty and subtle composition is prepared to his hand by Nature.”

“All you have really to do is to keep your back as straight as you can; and not think about what is upon it. The real and essential meaning of "virtue" is that straightness of back.”

“You may either win your peace, or buy it, win it, by resistance to evil, buy it, by compromise with evil.”

“I believe that the root of almost every schism and heresy from which the Christian church has ever suffered, has been the effort of men to earn, rather than to receive, their salvation.”

“When we build, let us think that we build for ever.”

“It is the glistening and softly spoken lie; the amiable fallacy; the patriotic lie of the historian, the provident lie of the politician, the zealous lie of the partisan, the merciful lie of the friend, and the careless lie of each man to himself, that cast that black mystery over humanity, through which we thank any man who pierces, as we would thank one who dug a well in a desert.”

“Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect in its own bad way.”

“Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.”

“There are, indeed, two forms of discontent: one laborious, the other indolent and complaining. We respect the man of laborious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is peace, or his ambition meekness. It is because of the special connection of meekness with contentment that it is promised that the meek shall "inherit the earth." Neither covetous men, nor the Grave, can inherit anything; they can but consume. Only contentment can possess.”

“Of all God's gifts to the sight of man, colour is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn.”

“In old times, men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith; in later times, they used the objects of faith that they might show their powers of painting.”

“Suppose any person to be put in possession of a large estate of fruitful land, with rich beds of gold in its gravel; countless herds of cattle in its pastures; houses, and gardens, and storehouses full of useful stores; but suppose, after all, that he could get no servants? In order that he may be able to have servants, some one in his neighbourhood must be poor, and in want of his gold — or his corn. Assume that no one is in want of either, and that no servants are to be had. He must, therefore, bake his own bread, make his own clothes, plough his own ground, and shepherd his own flocks. His gold will be as useful to him as any other yellow pebbles on his estate. His stores must rot, for he cannot consume them. He can eat no more than another man could eat, and wear no more than another man could wear. He must lead a life of severe and common labour to procure even ordinary comforts; he will be ultimately unable to keep either houses in repair, or fields in cultivation; and forced to content himself with a poor man's portion of cottage and garden, in the midst of a desert of waste land, trampled by wild cattle, and encumbered by ruins of palaces, which he will hardly mock at himself by calling "his own."”

“.. the art of becoming 'rich', in the common sense, is not absolutely nor finally the art of accumulating much money for ourselves, but also of contriving that our neighbour shall have less. In accurate terms, it is 'the art of establishing the maximum inequality in your own favour.”

“Inequalities of wealth, unjustly established, have assuredly injured the nation in which they exist during their establishment; and, unjustly directed, they injure it yet more during their existence. But inequalities of wealth justly established, benefit the nation in the course of their establishment; and, nobly used, aid it yet more by their existence.”

“And besides; the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one; distribute the earth as you will, the principal question remains inexorable, —Who is to dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay?</b”

“All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the "Pathetic Fallacy."”