I’ve just started carving a memorial to John Ruskin, the English author, art critic and artist. The words around the memorial reads:
Every noble life leaves its fibre interwoven forever in the work of the world.
I’ve always liked that quote, having first seen it carved above a doorway in Moreton in Marsh. It’s perfect for a memorial, not least one to the great man himself. Ruskin was one of the most important English figures in the Victorian era and the confluence of all these talents – as well as being a big philanthropist – means that he had some profound things to say when it came art, beauty and life. His writing is rich with moral and spiritual reflections – several of which would make fitting and poignant epitaphs. Here’s some quotes of his I’ve found that would be a fantastic way to remember a loved one. They are brief enough to be carved in stone and slate and full enough to carry lasting meaning. As another great man once said, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, and there is indeed a simplicity and timelessness to the following quotes.
There is no wealth but life.
The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.
Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and to tell what it saw in a plain way.
When we build, let us think that we build forever.
All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.
The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become of it.
What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do.
Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty if only we have the eyes to see them.
Fine art is that which in which the hand, the head, and the heart go together.
To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion – all in one.
Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing.
The path of a good woman is strewn with flowers.
Beauty is the promise of happiness.
A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
To make your work beautiful is to be yourself beautiful.
Love is the only wealth that cannot be lost.
A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
There is no wealth but life, including all its powers of love.
It is not what we do, but what we are, that touches hearts.
The greatest thing a soul can do is to love and be loved.
True love gives everything, and still feels it has given nothing.