Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.
John RuskinRead
Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.
Interpretation
Be clear and concise in your communication to ensure understanding.
This quote emphasizes the importance of brevity and clarity in communication. John Ruskin suggests that by using fewer words, one can capture the reader's attention, and by using simple language, one can ensure that the message is understood correctly, avoiding any potential misunderstandings.
In practice
In a writing workshop, a facilitator might use this quote to encourage participants to be clear and concise in their essays.
Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.
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 the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.
Conscious listening is very largely overlooked in the mainstream of education. It's such an important skill in life. And yet we expect children to pick it up from home or from peers informally.
By being so long in the lowest form [at Harrow] I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. . . . I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence - which is a noble thing. Naturally I am biased in favor of boys learning English; I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honor, and Greek as a treat.
They call it coaching but it is teaching. You do not just tell them...you show them the reasons.
When the child begins to think and to make use of the written language to express his rudimentary thinking, he is ready for elementary work; and this fitness is a question not of age or other incidental circumstance but of mental maturity.
We have an education and business culture that tends to reward quick factual answers over imaginative inquiry. Questioning isn’t encouraged - it is barely tolerated.
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