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John Ruskin Quotes

We’ve collected the best John Ruskin Quotes. Use them as an inspiration.

1
Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.
John Ruskin
2
Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.
John Ruskin
3
Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.
John Ruskin
4
The sky is the part of creation in which nature has done for the sake of pleasing man.
John Ruskin
5
There is no wealth but life.
John Ruskin
6
The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.
John Ruskin
7
It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.
John Ruskin
8
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.
John Ruskin
9
Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.
John Ruskin
10
Nothing is ever done beautifully which is done in rivalship: or nobly, which is done in pride.
John Ruskin
11
It is his restraint that is honorable to a person, not their liberty.
John Ruskin
12
A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.
John Ruskin
13
The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.
John Ruskin
14
There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves.
John Ruskin
15
Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor.
John Ruskin
16
Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.
John Ruskin
17
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.
John Ruskin
18
Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.
John Ruskin
19
Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.
John Ruskin
20
Men cannot not live by exchanging articles, but producing them. They live by work not trade.
John Ruskin
21
Civilization is the making of civil persons.
John Ruskin
22
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.
John Ruskin
23
Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.
John Ruskin
24
He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.
John Ruskin
25
No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.
John Ruskin
26
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.
John Ruskin
27
He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.
John Ruskin
28
The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
John Ruskin
29
There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
John Ruskin
30
When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.
John Ruskin
31
No person who is well bred, kind and modest is ever offensively plain; all real deformity means want for manners or of heart.
John Ruskin
32
All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.
John Ruskin
33
Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.
John Ruskin
34
The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it.
John Ruskin
35
I believe the first test of a truly great man is in his humility.
John Ruskin
36
No human being, however great, or powerful, was ever so free as a fish.
John Ruskin
37
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.
John Ruskin
38
No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.
John Ruskin
39
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.
John Ruskin
40
To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.
John Ruskin
41
Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.
John Ruskin
42
When we build, let us think that we build for ever.
John Ruskin
43
Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.
John Ruskin
44
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.
John Ruskin
45
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.
John Ruskin
46
Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.
John Ruskin
47
You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil.
John Ruskin
48
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.
John Ruskin
49
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.
John Ruskin
50
No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.
John Ruskin
51
All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.
John Ruskin
52
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.
John Ruskin
53
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.
John Ruskin
54
Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
John Ruskin
55
Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.
John Ruskin
56
Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.
John Ruskin
57
Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.
John Ruskin
58
The first duty of a state is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed and educated till it attains years of discretion.
John Ruskin
59
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.
John Ruskin
60
Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.
John Ruskin
61
The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world… to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.
John Ruskin
62
The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.
John Ruskin
63
It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.
John Ruskin
64
To give alms is nothing unless you give thought also.
John Ruskin
65
Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.
John Ruskin
66
No lying knight or lying priest ever prospered in any age, but especially not in the dark ones. Men prospered then only in following an openly declared purpose, and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds.
John Ruskin
67
Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.
John Ruskin
68
We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it.
John Ruskin
69
He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.
John Ruskin
70
A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.
John Ruskin
71
A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.
John Ruskin
72
Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts – the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.
John Ruskin
73
Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.
John Ruskin
74
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.
John Ruskin
75
It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.
John Ruskin
76
What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?
John Ruskin
77
No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.
John Ruskin
78
An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.
John Ruskin
79
You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.
John Ruskin
80
Men don’t and can’t live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don’t live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of laborers Unions.
John Ruskin