John Ruskin and the Penguin

Sunday August 10, 2008

Penguin

Yesterday I was in Sheffield, and had a look round the Ruskin gallery. He was quite an impressive man, John Ruskin, and his Collected Works are frighteningly extensive. Anyway, for those who are wrathful by inclination, I thought that the following quote (drawn from one of the great man’s letters to Charles Eliot Norton) may be therapeutic.

I find penguins at present the only comfort in life. One feels everything in the world so sympathetically ridiculous; one can’t be angry when one looks at a penguin.

Image: Wikimedia Commons. Drawing by VxD

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