unavailableness

Every genius is defended from approach by quantities of unavailableness.

Representative Men 2006

Every genius is defended from approach by quantities of unavailableness.

Uses of Great Men 1914

But the technical management of oil is more difficult than that of water-colour, and the impossibility of using it with safety among books or prints, and its unavailableness for note-book sketches and memoranda, are sufficient reasons for not introducing it in a course of practice intended chiefly for students of literature.

Lectures on Art Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 John Ruskin 1859

Every genius is defended from approach by quantities of unavailableness.

Representative Man (1850) 1850

Then follows the diminution of importance in peculiar places and public edifices, as they engage national affection or vanity; no single city can now take such queenly lead as that the pride of the whole body of the people shall be involved in adorning her; the buildings of London or Munich are not charged with the fullness of the national heart as were the domes of Pisa and Florence: -- their credit or shame is metropolitan, not acropolitan; central at the best, not dominant; and this is one of the chief modes in which the cessation of superstition, so far as it has taken place, has been of evil consequence to art, that the observance of local sanctities being abolished, meanness and mistake are anywhere allowed of, and the thoughts and wealth which were devoted and expended to good purpose in one place, are now distracted and scattered to utter unavailableness.

On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature John Ruskin 1859