Modern Painters, Volume III Quotes by John Ruskin: Context & Meanings

Modern Painters, Volume III, Part IV, Chapter XVI, “Of Modern Landscape,” section 24, printed page 260, Project Gutenberg #38923. Ruskin calls humility the first test of a truly great man, then immediately distinguishes humility from doubting one’s real power or hesitating about one’s opinions; his point is proportion, not self-denial. This is Victorian art criticism and moral reflection, not modern clinical or psychological evidence about humility.

Modern Painters, Volume III, Part IV, Chapter III, “Of the Real Nature of Greatness of Style,” section 3, printed page 26, Project Gutenberg #38923. Ruskin contrasts pursuing art to become a “great man” or attract admiration with honest reverence for art and self-respect in its practice, which he says can rescue art from dilettantism and fit it for service. This is nineteenth-century art-critical / vocational argument, not a modern organizational or occupational-health rule.