Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.
In plain words
Real art happens when your hands, your head and your heart all join in.
Where these words come from
- 88% sureThese words were traced back to where they first appeared. That source is listed below.
- John Ruskin, The Two Paths, Lecture II: "The Unity of Art", 1859.
- The Two Paths
- 1859 · England · Ruskin's lecture on what makes art truly great
More from John Ruskin
See allPolitical economy means, in plain English, nothing more than "citizens' economy"; and its first principles ought, therefore, to be understood by all who mean to take the responsibility of citizens, as those of household economy by all who take the responsibility of householders.
John RuskinAnd a nation's labour, well applied, is in like manner, amply sufficient to provide its whole population with good food and comfortable habitation; and not with those only, but with good education besides, and objects of luxury, art treasures, such as these you have around you now.John RuskinWhatever rebuke you would address to the improvident master of an ill-managed patrimony, precisely that rebuke we should address to ourselves, so far as we leave our population in idleness and our country in disorder.John RuskinThe principles which are right in the administration of a few fields, are right also in the administration of a great country from horizon to horizon: idleness does not cease to be ruinous because it is extensive, nor labour to be productive because it is universal.John RuskinI believe that the masses have a right to claim education from their government; but only so far as they acknowledge the duty of yielding obedience to their government.John RuskinFancy what we should have had around us now, if, instead of quarrelling and fighting over their work, the nations had aided each other in their work, or if even in their conquests, instead of effacing the memorials of those they succeeded and subdued, they had guarded the spoils of their victories.John Ruskin
John RuskinAnd a nation's labour, well applied, is in like manner, amply sufficient to provide its whole population with good food and comfortable habitation; and not with those only, but with good education besides, and objects of luxury, art treasures, such as these you have around you now.John RuskinWhatever rebuke you would address to the improvident master of an ill-managed patrimony, precisely that rebuke we should address to ourselves, so far as we leave our population in idleness and our country in disorder.John RuskinThe principles which are right in the administration of a few fields, are right also in the administration of a great country from horizon to horizon: idleness does not cease to be ruinous because it is extensive, nor labour to be productive because it is universal.John RuskinI believe that the masses have a right to claim education from their government; but only so far as they acknowledge the duty of yielding obedience to their government.John RuskinFancy what we should have had around us now, if, instead of quarrelling and fighting over their work, the nations had aided each other in their work, or if even in their conquests, instead of effacing the memorials of those they succeeded and subdued, they had guarded the spoils of their victories.John RuskinMore on creativity
Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.
William MorrisWe answer: To inquire into what God has made is the main function of the imagination.George MacDonaldThe imagination is that faculty which gives form to thought—not necessarily uttered form, but form capable of being uttered in shape or in sound, or in any mode upon which the senses can lay hold.George MacDonaldIt is, therefore, that faculty in man which is likest to the prime operation of the power of God, and has, therefore, been called the creative faculty, and its exercise creation.George MacDonaldIt is better to keep the word creation for that calling out of nothing which is the imagination of God; except it be as an occasional symbolic expression, whose daring is fully recognized, of the likeness of man’s work to the work of his maker.George MacDonaldThe imagination of man is made in the image of the imagination of God.George MacDonald
William MorrisWe answer: To inquire into what God has made is the main function of the imagination.George MacDonaldThe imagination is that faculty which gives form to thought—not necessarily uttered form, but form capable of being uttered in shape or in sound, or in any mode upon which the senses can lay hold.George MacDonaldIt is, therefore, that faculty in man which is likest to the prime operation of the power of God, and has, therefore, been called the creative faculty, and its exercise creation.George MacDonaldIt is better to keep the word creation for that calling out of nothing which is the imagination of God; except it be as an occasional symbolic expression, whose daring is fully recognized, of the likeness of man’s work to the work of his maker.George MacDonaldThe imagination of man is made in the image of the imagination of God.George MacDonald