John Ruskin Quotes

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.

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

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.

There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey.

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.

What we think or what we know or what we believe is in the end of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do

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

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.

Blue color is everlastingly appointed by the deity to be a source of delight.

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

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

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.

They are good furniture pictures, unworthy of praise, and undeserving of blame.

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

There is a working class - strong and happy - among both rich and poor: there is an idle class - weak, wicked, and miserable - among both rich and poor.

Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.

It does not matter what the whip is; it is none the less a whip, because you have cut thongs for it out of your own souls.

The step between practical and theoretic science, is the step between the miner and the geologist, the apocathecary and the chemist.

Modern travelling is not travelling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world... to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

Conceit may puff a man up, but never prop him up.

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

There is material enough in a single flower for the ornament of a score of cathedrals.

There is no solemnity so deep, to a right-thinking creature, as that of dawn.

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

In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.

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

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

Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.

I will not kill or hurt any living creature needlessly, nor destroy any beautiful thing, but will strive to save and comfort all gentle life, and guard and perfect all natural beauty upon the earth.

The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.

To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered.

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.

Kind hearts are the garden, kind thoughts are the roots, kind words are the blossoms, kind deeds are the fruit.

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.

People are eternally divided into two classes, the believer, builder, and praiser...and the unbeliever, destroyer and critic.

No individual rain drop ever considers itself responsible for the flood.

You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.

The actual flower is the plant's highest fulfilment, and are not here exclusively for herbaria, county floras and plant geography: they are here first of all for delight.

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

One can't be angry when one looks at a penguin.

To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.

All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.

The Bible is the one Book to which any thoughtful man may go with any honest question of life or destiny and find the answer of God by honest searching.

No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.

When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought is incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.

It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little.

There is no wealth but life.

Shadows are in reality, when the sun is shining, the most conspicuous thing in a landscape, next to the highest lights.

Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know in life.