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Quotes by John Ruskin

A book worth reading is worth buying.
– John Ruskin
A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.
– John Ruskin
A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.
– John Ruskin
A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.
– John Ruskin
All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.
– John Ruskin
An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind.
– John Ruskin
Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.
– John Ruskin
As a camel beareth labor, and heat, and hunger, and thirst, through deserts of sand, and fainteth not; so the fortitude of a man shall sustain him through all perils.
– John Ruskin
Be humble as the blade of grass that is being trodden underneath the feet. The little ant tastes joyously the sweetness of honey and sugar. The mighty elephant trembles in pain under the agony of sharp goad.
– John Ruskin
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
Civilization is the making of civil persons.
– John Ruskin
Cursing is invoking the assistance of a spirit to help you inflict suffering. Swearing on the other hand, is invoking, only the witness of a spirit to an statement you wish to make.
– John Ruskin
Do not think of your faults, still less of other's faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.
– John Ruskin
Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.
– John Ruskin
Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.
– John Ruskin
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
Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.
– John Ruskin
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
He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.
– John Ruskin
He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.
– John Ruskin
How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?
– John Ruskin
I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.
– John Ruskin
Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.
– John Ruskin
It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately.
– John Ruskin
It is his restraint that is honorable to a person, not their liberty.
– John Ruskin
It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.
– John Ruskin
Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor.
– John Ruskin
Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.
– John Ruskin
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
Men cannot not live by exchanging articles, but producing them. They live by work not trade.
– John Ruskin
Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.
– John Ruskin
Modern travelling is not travelling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.
– John Ruskin
Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.
– John Ruskin
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
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
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
No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.
– John Ruskin
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
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
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
Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.
– John Ruskin
Nothing is ever done beautifully which is done in rivalship: or nobly, which is done in pride.
– John Ruskin
Of all the things that oppress me, this sense of the evil working of nature herself - my disgust at her barbarity - clumsiness - darkness - bitter mockery of herself - is the most desolating.
– John Ruskin
One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.
– John Ruskin
People are eternally divided into two classes, the believer, builder, and praiser, and the unbeliever, destroyer and critic.
– John Ruskin
Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.
– John Ruskin
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.
– John Ruskin
Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.
– John Ruskin
Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.
– John Ruskin
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
Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are.
– John Ruskin
The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.
– John Ruskin
The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it.
– John Ruskin
The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work.
– John Ruskin
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
The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world... to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.
– John Ruskin
The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.
– John Ruskin
The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.
– John Ruskin
The sky is the part of creation in which nature has done for the sake of pleasing man.
– John Ruskin
The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.
– John Ruskin
The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.
– John Ruskin
There is no wealth but life.
– John Ruskin
They are good furniture pictures, unworthy of praise, and undeserving of blame.
– John Ruskin
To give alms is nothing unless you give thought also.
– John Ruskin
To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.
– John Ruskin
Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.
– John Ruskin
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
When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.
– John Ruskin
When we build, let us think that we build for ever.
– John Ruskin
Whether for life or death, do your own work well.
– John Ruskin
...in order that a man may be happy, it is necessary that he should not only be capable of his work, but a good judge of his work.
– John Ruskin
Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.
– John Ruskin
Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.
– John Ruskin
Taste is not only a part and index of morality, it is the only morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is What do you like? Tell me what you like, I'll tell you what you are.
– John Ruskin
The highest reward for man's toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it.
– John Ruskin
There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey.
– John Ruskin
What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.
– John Ruskin
Of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave.
– John Ruskin
You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.
– John Ruskin
You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil buy it, by compromise with evil.
– John Ruskin
When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.
– John Ruskin
There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.
– John Ruskin
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
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
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
No human being, however great, or powerful, was ever so free as a fish.
– John Ruskin
No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.
– John Ruskin
Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions.
– John Ruskin
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
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
It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.
– John Ruskin
It is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, can never be recalled.
– John Ruskin
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
In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.
– John Ruskin
Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.
– John Ruskin
Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them.
– John Ruskin
Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.
– John Ruskin
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
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
All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.
– John Ruskin