Quote #6

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.

More from John Ruskin

  1. The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as its greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.
  2. 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 th…
  3. Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.
  4. A little group of wise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools.
  5. For certainly it is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his read…
  6. What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.
  7. 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 w…
  8. 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 …

All John Ruskin quotes