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you have to become lowly and strong; to recognise the powers of others and to fulfil your own.
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“you have to become lowly and strong; to recognise the powers of others and to fulfil your own.”

John Ruskin

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Source
Lectures on Art, Delivered Before the University of Oxford in Hilary Term, 1870
Date
1870
Meaning

Meaning of “you have to become lowly and strong; to…”

Creative development is framed as a balance between recognizing other people’s powers and taking responsibility for developing one’s own rather than copying them.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Lectures on Art, Lecture VII, Project Gutenberg #19164. Ruskin is warning students against both conceit and servile imitation.

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Themes

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ArtCreativityGratitudeGrowthHappinessHumilityIdentityIndependenceIntegrityJoyPersonal GrowthPositive Quotes About a Constructive OutlookSelf RelianceSelf TrustShortPride
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With the first word I used intelligently, I learned to live, to think, to hope.
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“With the first word I used intelligently, I learned to live, to think, to hope.”

Helen Keller · Optimism: An Essay · 1903
Meaning & context

Language is remembered as opening several capacities at once—thought, hope and a fuller experience of living—rather than merely adding a vocabulary item.

Source details

Optimism: An Essay (1903), Project Gutenberg #31622. Keller is reflecting on her own early experience of language and education.

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whatever school you follow, it must be only to learn method, not to imitate result
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“whatever school you follow, it must be only to learn method, not to imitate result”

John Ruskin · Lectures on Art, Delivered Before the University of Oxford in Hilary Term, 1870 · 1870
Meaning & context

Studying earlier schools should teach method without turning the student into an imitator, preserving space for an artistic response rooted in the maker’s own time and nature.

Source details

Lectures on Art, Lecture VII, Project Gutenberg #19164. The surrounding passage explicitly distinguishes learning from past masters from adopting their results as one’s own.

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I celebrate myself, and sing myself.
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“I celebrate myself, and sing myself.”

Walt Whitman · Song of Myself · 1882
Meaning & context

The opening celebrates the self without separating it from the wider world that the poem later embraces.

Source details

Song of Myself, section 1 in the 1882 Leaves of Grass text, printed page 29 (Wikisource scan page 35). The retained wording “I celebrate myself, and sing myself” is not the 1855 first-edition opening, which reads only “I celebrate myself”; the synchronized source year is therefore corrected from 1855 to 1882.

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They ought to be illustrations not authorities, studies not models.
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“They ought to be illustrations not authorities, studies not models.”

George Henry Lewes · The Principles of Success in Literature · 1891
Meaning & context

Great predecessors can teach principles without becoming templates to copy, preserving the learner’s responsibility to develop independent judgment and expression.

Source details

The Principles of Success in Literature, chapter on Style, Project Gutenberg #10420; Lewes is warning writers against imitating Cicero, Titian or other masters.

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I am larger, better than I thought, I did not know I held so much goodness.
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“I am larger, better than I thought, I did not know I held so much goodness.”

Walt Whitman · Song of the Open Road · 1856
Meaning & context

Whitman describes self-discovery as expansion rather than invention: experience reveals capacities and goodness that were already present but insufficiently recognized.

Source details

Walt Whitman, 'Song of the Open Road,' section 5 in the represented 1882 Leaves of Grass text. 'I am larger, better than I thought, I did not know I held so much goodness' follows the speaker's declaration of being loosed from imagined limits. It remains poetic first-person self-discovery rather than empirical psychology.

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