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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: insight, of a mind which has surrendered its best hopes, and been
foiled in its favourite aims.
I spent the ten strongest years of my life, (from twenty to thirty,)
in endeavouring to show the excellence of the work of the man whom I
believed, and rightly believed, to be the greatest painter of the
schools of England since Reynolds. I had then perfect faith in the
power of every great truth of beauty to prevail ultimately, and take
its right place in usefulness and honour; and I strove to bring the
painter's work into this due place, while the painter was yet alive.
But he knew, better than I, the uselessness of talking about what
people could not see for themselves. He always discouraged me
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