John Ruskin citáty

strana 3

„Kvalita není nikdy náhoda, vždy je výsledkem inteligentního úsilí.“

„Zahnat nedokonalost znamená zničit výraz, zkontrolovat námahu, ochromit vitalitu.“

„A když jsme potkali lásku, víme, co nám v životě chybělo.“

„Knihy jsou pro lidi tím, čím jsou pro ptáky křídla.“

„Moudrý má tři vlastnosti: že sám koná, co radí konati druhým, že nikdy nejedná proti spravedlnosti a že trpělivě snáší slabosti lidí kolem sebe.“

„Knihy jsou lidem tím, čím jsou perutě ptákům.“

„Moc není dána člověku, aby utlačoval slabého, nýbrž aby ho podporoval a pomáhal mu.“

„Četba je doslova rozhovor s lidmi mnohem moudřejšími a zajímavějšími, než jsou ti, s nimiž se můžeme seznamovat kolem sebe.“

„Úkolem pravé výchovy není jen, abychom přiměli lidi konat dobré skutky, nýbrž aby v nich nacházeli i radost. Nejde jen o to, aby byli čistí, ale aby milovali čistotu. Nejde jen o to, aby byli spravedliví, ale aby po spravedlnosti lačnili a žíznili.“

„Každý člověk užívá práci jiných lidí, a proto, nemá-li být zlodějem, musí se sám namáhati a dávati jiným svou práci za to, co bere od nich.“

„Jest prostota přirozená a jest prostota moudrostí. Ta i ona způsobují lásku a úctu.“

„Moudrost není v sebezapírání, ale v tom, naučit se nalézat radost ve věcech dostupných.“

„Lidská duše je zrcadlo, ve kterém lze zhlédnout obraz božského rozumu.“

„Rozum se zesiluje a zeslabuje čtením právě tak jako tělo čerstvým nebo hnijícím vzduchem.“

„Je mnoho náboženství, ale jen jedna mravnost.“

„Trpělivým čekáním se nikam nedostaneme; jen trpělivou prací.“

„Knihu, kterou stojí za to číst, stojí za to i vlastnit.“

„Abychom se naučili trpělivosti, musíme se téměř tak cvičit, jako když se učíme hudbě, zatím však skoro vždy jsme nepřítomni, když učitel přichází.“

„Vyhledejme, co máme s ostatními společného, ne co nás od nich dělí.“

„Kdekoli začíná hledání pravdy, začíná život; kdekoli přestává toto hledání, život přestává.“

„Ztracený čas nikdy nevrátíš, spáchané zlo nikdy nenapravíš.“

„Pamatujte, že nejkrásnější věci na světě jsou ty nejméně užitečné; například pávy a lilie.“

„Tak jako nemáš jíst jen pro chuť, tak nesmíš číst jen pro zábavu.“

„Mluvit pravdu, to je jako dobře psát - přichází to praxí.“

„Jak strašný by byl svět, kdyby se nerodily ustavičně děti, jež sebou přinášejí možnost dokonalosti a nevinnost.“

„Cesta dobré ženy je skutečně poseta květy, ty však se objeví za šlépějemi, kterými kráčela, a nikoli před nimi.“

„Velký duch, jemuž se nedostává mravního cítění, je pramenem velkých pohrom země.“

„Čtení a psaní nelze nazvat malým vzděláním, když napomáhá lidem, aby byli lepší ke všem tvorům.“

„Zaslouží-li člověk pochvaly, dbejte, abyste mu ji neodepřeli.“

„Aby vás práce bavila potřebujete pro ni být fyzicky a psychicky zdatní, nesmí jí být příliš moc a musíte mít pocit, že jste úspěšní.“

„Není nic podivnějšího, než když lidé uznávají poctivost ve hře, ale nikoliv v práci.“

„Ze všeho zbytečného mrhání lze nejméně dovolit mrhání prací.“

“We need examples of people who, leaving Heaven to decide whether they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek — not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, self-possession; and honouring themselves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of peace.”

“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.”

“You think it a great triumph to make the sun draw brown landscapes for you! That was also a discovery, and some day may be useful. But the sun had drawn landscapes before for you, not in brown, but in green, and blue, and all imaginable colours, here in England. Not one of you ever looked at them, then; not one of you cares for the loss of them, now, when you have shut the sun out with smoke, so that he can draw nothing more, except brown blots through a hole in a box. There was a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell, once upon a time, divine as the vale of Tempe; you might have seen the Gods there morning and evening, — Apollo and all the sweet Muses of the Light — walking in fair procession on the lawns of it, and to and fro among the pinnacles of its crags. You cared neither for Gods nor grass, but for cash (which you did not know the way to get); you thought you could get it by what the Times calls "Railroad Enterprise." You Enterprised a Railroad through the valley — you blasted its rocks away, heaped thousands of tons of shale into its lovely stream. The valley is gone, and the gods with it; and now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half-an-hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton; which you think a lucrative process of exchange — you Fools Everywhere.”

“You talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time: I tell you, Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm — we who smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish — ourselves who consume: we are the mildew, and the flame.”

“All true opinions are living, and show their life by being capable of nourishment; therefore of change. But their change is that of a tree — not of a cloud.”

“There is nothing so small but that we may honor God by asking His guidance of it, or insult Him by taking it into our own hands.”

“In general, when the imagination is at all noble, it is irresistible, and therefore those who can at all resist it ought to resist it. Be a plain topographer if you possibly can; if Nature meant you to be anything else, she will force you to it; but never try to be a prophet.”

“Other men used their effete faiths and mean faculties with a high moral purpose. The Venetian gave the most earnest faith, and the lordliest faculty, to gild the shadows of an antechamber, or heighten the splendours of a holiday.”

“The secret of language is the secret of sympathy and its full charm is possible only to the gentle.”

“He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.”

“No small misery is caused by overworked and unhappy people, in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of work itself.”

“Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.”

“Without perfect sympathy with the animals around them, no gentleman's education, no Christian education, could be of any possible use.”

“There is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.”

“The word "Blue" does not mean the sensation caused by a gentian on the human eye; but it means the power of producing that sensation: and this power is always there, in the thing, whether we are there to experience it or not, and would remain there though there were not a man left on the face of the earth.”

“In all base schools of art, the craftsman is dependent for his bread on originality; that is to say, on finding in himself some fragment of isolated faculty, by which his work may be distinct from that of other men. We are ready enough to take delight in our little doings, without any such stimulus; — what must be the effect of the popular applause which continually suggests that the little thing we can separately do is as excellent as it is singular; and what the effect of the bribe, held out to us through the whole of life, to produce — it being also in our peril not to produce — something different from the work of our neighbors?”

“We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that it divided; but the men: — Divided into mere segments of men — broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished, — sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is — we should think that there might be some loss in it also. And the great cry that rises from our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this, — that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads can be met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching, for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach at them, if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can only be met by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labour.”

“Of all the bête, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-blooded stuff I ever saw on a human stage, that thing last night beat — as far as the acting and story went — and of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, tuneless and scrannelpipiest — tongs and boniest — doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest, so far as the sound went. I never was so relieved, so far as I can remember in my life, by the stopping of any sound — not excepting railway whistles — as I was by the cessation of the cobbler’s bellowing.”

“The zealous care with which J. M. W. Turner endeavoured to do his duty, is proved by a large existing series of drawings, exquisitely tinted, and often completely coloured, all by his own hand, of the most difficult perspective subjects—illustrating not only directions of line, but effects of light - with a care and completion which would put the work of any ordinary teacher to utter shame. In teaching generally — he would neither waste time nor spare it - he would look over a student's drawing at the Academy, point to a defective part, make a scratch on the paper at the side, say nothing. If the student saw what was wanted, and did it, Turner was delighted; but if the student could not follow. Turner left him.”

“In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.”

“God is a kind Father. He sets us all in the place where He wishes us to be employed; and that employment is truly "our Father's business." He chooses work for every creature which will be delightful to them, if they do it simply and humbly. He gives us always strength enough, and sense enough, for what He wants us to do; if we either tire ourselves, or puzzle ourselves, it is our own fault. And we may always be sure, whatever we are doing, that we cannot be pleasing Him, if we are not happy ourselves.”

“It is only the basest writer who cannot speak of the sea without talking of "raging waves," "remorseless floods," "ravenous billows," etc.; and it is one of the signs of the highest power in a writer to check all such habits of thought, and to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the pure fact, out of which if any feeling comes to him or his reader, he knows it must be a true one.”

“For when we are interested in the beauty of a thing, the oftener we can see it the better; but when we are interested only by the story of a thing, we get tired of hearing the same tale told over and over again, and stopping always at the same point — we want a new story presently, a newer and better one — and the picture of the day, and novel of the day, become as ephemeral as the coiffure or the bonnet of the day. Now this spirit is wholly adverse to the existence of any lovely art. If you mean to throw it aside to-morrow, you can never have it to-day.”

“I do not believe that ever any building was truly great, unless it had mighty masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow mingled with its surface.”

“A little group of wise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools.”

“For this dead Venice once taught us to be merchants, sailors and gentlemen; and this dying England taught the Americans all they have of speech, or thought, hitherto. What thoughts they have not learned from England are foolish thoughts; what words they have not learned from England, unseemly words; the vile among them not being able even to be humorous parrots, but only obscene mocking birds.”

“Engraving is, in brief terms, the Art of Scratch.”

“He only is advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into living peace. And the men who have this life in them are the true lords or kings of the earth — they, and they only.”

“And with respect to the mode in which these general principles affect the secure possession of property, so far am I from invalidating such security, that the whole gist of these papers will be found ultimately to aim at an extension in its range; and whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.”