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Meaning
The quote suggests that beauty does not have to be practical to matter. It points to peacocks and lilies as examples of things valued for appearance rather than usefulness. The idea is that beauty can stand on its own, even when it serves no obvious purpose.
When It Was Said
1853
Who It Was Said To
Not documented yet.
Historical Context
Cited on Wikiquote as coming from Volume I, chapter II, section 17.
Source
Volume I, chapter II, section 17
Original Language & Translation
Originally said in English.
Did They Really Say It?
Listed with a cited source on Wikiquote.
Did You Know?
Cited on Wikiquote as coming from Volume I, chapter II, section 17.
About John Ruskin
English writer and art critic
John Ruskin was an English Victorian polymath, active as a writer, lecturer, art historian, art critic, draughtsman, and philanthropist. He is known for the breadth of his work and for the many fields he wrote about. His writing ranged across art and architecture, political economy, education, museology, geology, botany, ornithology, literature, history, and myth. That range made him an unusually wide-ranging public intellectual, with work that moved freely between the arts and the natural world.
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READ THE SOURCE
Books by John Ruskin
The Seven Lamps of Architecture
2000
Unto This Last
2006
The Stones of Venice
2007
Mornings in Florence
1881
Lectures on art delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870
2007