Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.
Interpretation
Endurance and patience are more admirable virtues than mere physical strength and beauty.
This quote by John Ruskin emphasizes that true nobility lies in the qualities of endurance and patience, which are often more difficult to cultivate than superficial attributes like strength and beauty. It suggests that character and the ability to persevere through challenges are of greater value than superficial appearances or raw power.
In practice
In a motivational speech about resilience in tough times.
In health of mind and body, men should see with their own eyes, hear and speak without trumpets, walk on their feet, not on wheels, and work and war with their arms, not with engine-beams, nor rifles warranted to kill twenty men at a shot before you can see them.
You talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time: I tell you, Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm - we who smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish - ourselves who consume: we are the mildew, and the flame.
To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered.
See that your children be taught, not only the labors of the earth, but the loveliness of it.
A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.
When men do not love their hearth, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have dishonoured both ... Our God is a house-hold God, as well as a heavenly one; He has an altar in every man's dwelling.
...maybe a damned good night's sleep will bring me back to a gentle sanity. But at the moment, I look about this room and, like myself, it's all in disarray: things fallen out of place, cluttered, jumbled, lost, knocked over and I can't put it straight, don't want to. Perhaps living through these petty days will get us ready for the dangerous ones.
Whenever you are blue or lonely or stricken by some humiliating thing you did, the cure and the hope is in caring about other people.
Only in quietness do we possess our own minds and discover the resources of the Inner Life.
I have the capacity of being more wicked than any example that man could set me.
Look round the habitable world, how few Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue!
Sometimes I lose a whole morning waiting on journalists and other people who look for me. But I always find some time for reading, talking to my friends and feeling what is happening in this world.
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