Saturday 8 February 2014

“a something wider belt than the line where the world rolls into night”



John Ruskin you mad, creaky Victorian bastard. You may think the use of iron in buildings stops them being architecture, but you can write like a motherfucker when you want to.

“There is a marked likeness between the virtue of man and the enlightenment of the globe he inhabits – the same diminishing gradation in vigour up to the limits of their domains, the same essential separation from their contraries – the same twilight at the meeting of the two: a something wider belt than the line where the world rolls into night, that strange twilight of the virtues; that dusky debatable land, wherein zeal becomes cruelty, and faith superstition, and each and all vanish into gloom.”

I think that’s one fucking sentence? Usually I loath long sentences but I cannot deny he makes every part of that one sing.


1 comment:

  1. That is some delicious wording. One thing I love about Victorian texts, whether they are writing about political economy (Mill), religion and superstition (Frazier), or architecture (Ruskin), they don't lose their poetic sensibilities. A far cry from some of the dry modern texts...

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