Search -
Precious thoughts, moral and religious (1875)
Precious thoughts moral and religious - 1875 Author:John Ruskin Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IMPERFECTION. Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progr... more »ess and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent, The foxglove blossom,a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in full bloom,is a type of the life of this world. And in all things that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies,which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change ; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyse vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy. Sublimity. Impressions of awe and sorrow being at the root of the sensation of sublimity, and the beauty of separate flowers not being of the kind which connects itself with such sensation, there is a wide distinction, in general, between flower loving minds and minds of the highest order. HUMBLEST OF THE EARTH-CHILDRE.V. Lichen, and mosses (though these last in their luxuriance are deep and rich as herbage, yet both for the most part humblest of the green things that live), how of these f Meek creatures ! the first mercy of the earth, veiling with hushed softness its dintless rocks ; creatures full of pity, covering with strange and tender honor the scarred disgrace of ruin, laying quiet finger on the trembling stones, to teach them rest. No words, that I know of, will say what these mosses are. None a...« less