John Ruskin Quotes

Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.

Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

The sky is the part of creation in which nature has done for the sake of pleasing man.

There is no wealth but life.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.

Nearly all the powerful people of this age are unbelievers, the best of them in doubt and misery, the most in plodding hesitation, doing as well as they can, what practical work lies at hand.

Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.

Nothing is ever done beautifully which is done in rivalship: or nobly, which is done in pride.

It is his restraint that is honorable to a person, not their liberty.

A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.

The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.

There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves.

Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor.

Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.

Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.

Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.

Men cannot not live by exchanging articles, but producing them. They live by work not trade.

Civilization is the making of civil persons.

The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men‘s lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.

Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities.

He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.

No person who is well bred, kind and modest is ever offensively plain; all real deformity means want for manners or of heart.

All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it.

I believe the first test of a truly great man is in his humility.

No human being, however great, or powerful, was ever so free as a fish.

The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don’t mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.

When we build, let us think that we build for ever.

Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.

Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light.

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.

You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil.

It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

Man’s only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him. Reverence something to be worshipped by him, and love something to be cherished by him, forever.

The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.

Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.

Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.