Limited Time Offer
Premium members can get their quote collection automatically imported into their Quotewise collections.
"Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for ever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be such work as … - John Ruskin
"Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for ever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, "See! this our fathers did for us." For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, or in its gold. Its glory is in its Age."
English
Collect this quote
About John Ruskin
John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900) was an English author, poet and painter, most famous for his work as art critic and social critic.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Kata Phusin
•
Rŏsŭkʻin
•
J. Ruskin
•
John Rosukin
•
Jon Rasukin
•
Dzhon Rëskin
•
Ruskin
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Shorter versions of this quote
Additional quotes by John Ruskin
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.
Loading...