John Ruskin Quotes

It takes a great deal of living to get a little deal of learning.

Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

Variety is a positive requisite even in the character of our food.

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

The true work of a critic is not to make his hearer believe him, but agree with him.

In the utmost solitudes of nature, the existence of hell seems to me as legibly declared by a thousand spiritual utterances as that of heaven.

To yield reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at his disposal, is not slavery; often, it is the noblest state in which a man can live in this world.

People are always expecting to get peace in heaven: but you know whatever peace they get there will be ready-made. Whatever making of peace they can be blest for, must be on the earth here.

Multitudes think they like to do evil; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world.

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.

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?

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.

To cultivate sympathy you must be among living creatures, and thinking about them; and to cultivate admiration, you must be among beautiful things and looking at them.

We are, after all, only trustees of the wealth we possess. Without the community and its resources... there would be little wealth for anyone.

It is not the church we want, but the sacrifice; not the emotion of admiration, but the act of adoration; not the gift, but the giving.

It is a matter of the simplest demonstration, that no man can be really appreciated but by his equal or superior.

Our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves what shall be true for the future.

God never imposes a duty without giving time to do it.

Whatever merit there is in anything that I have written is simply due to the fact that when I was a child my mother daily read me a part of the Bible and daily made me learn a part of it by heart.

One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

No one can become rich by the efforts of only their toil, but only by the discovery of some method of taxing the labor of others.

Labor rids us of three great evils; tediousness, vice, and poverty.

Science is the knowledge of constant things, not merely of passing events, and is properly less the knowledge of general laws than of existing facts.

The beginning and almost the end of all good law is that everyone shall work for their bread and receive good bread for their work.

A splendour of miscellaneous spirits.

How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty.

Civilization is the making of civil persons.

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

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.

A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.

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.

Wise laws and just restraints are to a noble nation not chains, but chains of mail, -- strength and defense, though something of an incumbrance.

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.

Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, that the sight of them may contribute to his mental health, power, and pleasure.

You cannot get anything out of nature or from God by gambling; only out of your neighbor.

Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions.

Labour without joy is base. Labour without sorrow is base. Sorrow without labour is base. Joy without labour is base.

Freedom is only granted us that obedience may be more perfect.

I believe that the sight is a more important thing than the drawing.

Whether we force the man's property from him by pinching his stomach, or pinching his fingers, makes some difference anatomically; morally, none whatsoever.

It was stated, . . . that the value of architecture depended on two distinct characters:--the one, the impression it receives from human power; the other, the image it bears of the natural creation.

Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy.Bothyourreligionand policy must be basedon it.

Contrast increases the splendor of beauty, but it disturbs its influence; it adds to its attractiveness, but diminishes its power.

Greatness is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but the expression of the mind of a God-made great man.

True taste is forever growing, learning, reading, worshipping, laying its hand upon its mouth because it is astonished, casting its shoes from off its feet because it finds all ground holy.

Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to oar moral nature in its purity and perfection.

Don't just look at buildings ... watch them.

Much of the character of everyman may be read in his house.

Every great man is always being helped by everybody, for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.

Repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite,--energy.