When Ruskin was a child, his devout mother, Margaret Ruskin, 'established [his] soul in life' by forcing him to 'learn long chapters of the Bible by heart; as well as to read it every syllable through, aloud, hard names and all, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, about once a year,' with Ruskin concluding later that to this discipline, he owed not only a profound knowledge of the Bible but also the development of his own literary style and taste as well as the assumption of habits of painstaking industry and of an inclination to view the wonders of the world with 'devotional' feelings ( Works, 28.101; 27.167; 35.14; 4.350; 33.110).