Modern Painters Volume I (of V)

John Ruskin

there is no process of amalgamation by which opinions, wrong individually, can become right merely by their multitude

All our moral feelings are so in-woven with our intellectual powers, that we cannot affect the one without in some degree addressing the other;

We shall find, in the course of our investigation, that beauty and difficulty go together; and that they are only mean and paltry difficulties which it is wrong or contemptible to wrestle with. Be it remembered then—Power is never wasted. Whatever power has been employed, produces excellence in proportion to its own dignity and exertion; and the faculty of perceiving this exertion, and appreciating this dignity, is the faculty of perceiving excellence.