BrainStorm: 2014

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

On Guilt and mistakes

"Forget your mistakes, but remember the lessons they taught you." —Author Unknown

"He who makes no mistakes doesn’t do anything." — Author Unknown

"We cannot make today’s decisions with tomorrow’s knowledge and experience." —Author

"The past should be a springboard, not a hammock." —Irving Ball

"Never let yesterday use up today." — Author Unknown

"Failure is an event. It is not a person." — Zig Ziglar

"The guilty think all talk is of themselves." —Geoffrey Chaucer

"Guilt upon the conscience, like rust upon iron, both defiles and consumes it, gnawing and creeping into it, as that does which at last eats out the very heart and substance of the metal." —South

Saturday, November 1, 2014

John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political economy. His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. Ruskin penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded by a preference for plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, and architectural structures and ornamentation.

He was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century, and up to the First World War. (From Wikipedia)

The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don't mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.

There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey.

Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.

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

Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.

No human being, however great, or powerful, was ever so free as a fish.

Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

Do not think of your faults, still less of other's faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.

Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.

The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.

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.

To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.

That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.

It is his restraint that is honorable to a person, not their liberty.

It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.

Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.

Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are.

A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

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