Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.
John RuskinRead
Without seeking, truth cannot be known at all. It can neither be declared from pulpits, nor set down in articles, nor in any wise prepared and sold in packages ready for use. Truth must be ground for every man by itself out of it such, with such help as he can get, indeed, but not without stern labor of his own.
Interpretation
Truth cannot be easily given; it requires personal effort and diligence to discover.
This quote by John Ruskin emphasizes that truth is not something that can be handed down or packaged for easy consumption; instead, it must be actively sought and worked for by each individual. The process of seeking truth involves personal effort, introspection, and sometimes struggle, suggesting that the journey to understanding is as important as the knowledge itself.
In practice
In a debate about morality, one could use this quote to emphasize the necessity of personal reflection in understanding ethical truths.
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.
You're afraid of imagination and even more afraid of dreams. Afraid of the resposibility that begins in dreams. But you have to sleep and dreams are a part of sleep. When you're awake you can suppress imagination but you can't supress dreams.
Give them great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will eat like wolves and fight like devils.
If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life.
A psychologist said to me, there are only two important questions you have to ask yourself. What do you really feel? And, what do you really want? If you can answer those two, you probably can leave your neuroses behind you.
It is open to every man to choose the direction of his striving; and also every man may draw comfort from Lessing's fine saying, that the search for truth is more precious than its possession.
I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.
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