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“All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.”
― John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing

“The lives of scientists, considered as Lives, almost always make dull reading. For one thing, the careers of the famous and the merely ordinary fall into much the same pattern, give or take an honorary degree or two, or (in European countries) an honorific order. It could be hardly otherwise. Academics can only seldom lead lives that are spacious or exciting in a worldly sense. They need laboratories or libraries and the company of other academics. Their work is in no way made deeper or more cogent by privation, distress or worldly buffetings. Their private lives may be unhappy, strangely mixed up or comic, but not in ways that tell us anything special about the nature or direction of their work. Academics lie outside the devastation area of the literary convention according to which the lives of artists and men of letters are intrinsically interesting, a source of cultural insight in themselves. If a scientist were to cut his ear off, no one would take it as evidence of a heightened sensibility; if a historian were to fail (as Ruskin did) to consummate his marriage, we should not suppose that our understanding of historical scholarship had somehow been enriched.”
― Peter B. Medawar

“Who was it who said, 'the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless: peacocks and lilies, for instance'?"
"I think that was Ruskin," says Jack.
"Ha!" laughs Charles. "There's truth in that. Could have included women, too." Charles laughs loudly at his own joke.
"Only if you're to assume a woman's sole purpose in life is to look good," counters Lillian.
"Well of course... there's looking good... and there's child-bearing," adds Charles, still looking ahead at the bird.
Lillian grips the bag in her lap a little more tightly.
If the artist seated behind them is aware of the tension, he deflects artfully. "I think Ruskin misses the point," he says. "Beauty is never useless. It has purpose. Look at us, sitting here. We've ceased all other activity just to pause for a moment and wonder at the sight of this bird. The extraordinary jolts us from the mundane and makes us feel something. It reminds us we're alive."
"Rather like art," says Lillian, after a moment.
Jack meets her gaze in the wing-mirror and nods. "Yes. Art. Music. Love."
Lillian drops her gaze, unexpected heat flooding her cheeks.”
― Hannah Richell, The Peacock Summer

“I repeat the rhyme. I think the temperature of the room drops a few degrees. A movement catches my eye, but it’s just the curtain rippling again. No one’s there.
Then a voice soft as velvet, dark as the night, speaks behind me.
“You called?”
― Zara Storm, The Court that Bleeds Gold

“The important things in life are not things.”
― John Ruskin

“I don’t care what the price is!â€� Aurelia reached for him, grabbing his hand. Tears spilled out of her eyes. She pushed away the warning buzzing in her head. “Whatever you ask of me, I’ll give it, as long as it gets me
away from the king!”
― Celeste Baxendell, Stalks of Gold

“I don’t care what the price is!â€� Aurelia reached for him, grabbing his hand. Tears spilled out of her eyes. She pushed away the warning buzzing in her head. “Whatever you ask of me, I’ll give it, as long as it gets me away from the king!”
― Celeste Baxendell, Stalks of Gold