John Ruskin Quotes

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel.

Dream lofty dreams and as you dream so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall at last unveil.

If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and what it saw in a plain way. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion--all in one.

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

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

You can only possess beauty through understanding it.

Modern science gives lectures on botany, to show there is no such thing as a flower; on humanity, to show there is no such thing as a man; and on theology, to show there is no such thing as a God. No such thing as a man, but only a mechanism, No such thing as a God, but only a series of forces.

Occult Theft,--Theft which hides itself even from itself, and is legal, respectable, and cowardly,--corrupts the body and soul of man, to the last fibre of them. And the guilty Thieves of Europe, the real sources of all deadly war in it, are the Capitalists

God alone can finish.

It does not much matter that an individual loses two or three hundred pounds in buying a bad picture, but it is to be regretted that a nation should lose two or three hundred thousand in raising a ridiculous building.

When love and skill work together expect a masterpiece.

All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hours, and the books of all Time.

Cheerfulness is as natural to the heart of man in strong health as color to his cheek and wherever there is habitual gloom there must be either bad air unwholesome food improperly severe labor or erring habits of life.

It is evident that the chief feeling induced by woody country is one of reverence for its antiquity. There is a quiet melancholy about the decay of the patriarchal trunks, which is enhanced by the green and elastic vigor of the young saplings; the noble form of the forest aisles, and the subdued light which penetrates their entangled boughs, combine to add to the impression; and the whole character of the scene is calculated to excite conservative feeling. The man who could remain a radical in a wood country is a disgrace to his species.

The highest reward for man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.

And whether consciously or not, you must be in many a heart enthroned: queens you must always be: queens to your lovers; queens to your husbands and sons; queens of higher mystery to the world beyond, which bows itself, and will forever bow, before the myrtle crown, and the stainless scepter of womanhood.

When men are rightfully occupied then their amusement grows out of their work as the color petals out of a fruitful garden.

The beauty of the animal form is in exact proportion to the amount of moral and intellectual virtue expressed by it.

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless.

The weakest among us has a gift however seemingly trivial which is peculiar to him and which worthily used will be a gift also to his race.

There is no wealth but life.

We are always in these days endeavoring to separate intellect and manual labor; we want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen in the best sense.

To be content in utter darkness and ignorance is indeed unmanly, and therefore we think that to love light and find knowledge must always be right. Yet wherever pride has any share in the work, even knowledge and light may be ill pursued. Knowledge is good, and light is good: yet man perished in seeking knowledge, and moths perish in seeking light; and if we, who are crushed before the moth, will not accept such mystery as is needful to us, we shall perish in like manner.

I know well that happiness is in little things.

the true knowledge is disciplined and tested knowledge,—not the first thought that comes, so the true passion is disciplined and tested passion,—not the first passion that comes. The first that come are the vain, the false, the treacherous; if you yield to them they will lead you wildly and far, in vain pursuit, in hollow enthusiasm, till you have no true purpose and no true passion left. Not that any feeling possible to humanity is in itself wrong, but only wrong when undisciplined.

He who has truth at his heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue.

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

No one can do me any good by loving me I have more love than I need or could do any good with but people do me good by making me love them - which isn't easy.

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

So far, therefore, as the science of exchange relates to the advantage of one of the exchanging persons only, it is founded on the ignorance or incapacity of the opposite person. . . . It is therefore a science founded on nescience. . . . This science, alone of sciences, must, by all available means, promulgate and prolong its opposite nescience. . . . It is therefore peculiarly and alone science of darkness.

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

To speak and act truth with constancy and precision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps as meretorious, as to speak it under intimidation or penalty

Education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.

No architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.

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.

It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. Whenyou pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you paytoo little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing youbought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. Thecommon law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting alot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is wellto add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you willhave enough to pay for something better.

For, truly, the man who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cogwheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves....On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness; all his dullness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also, and we know the height of it only, when we see the clouds settling upon him.

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

Reading and writing are not education if they do not help people to be kind to all creatures

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

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.

No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, or happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than man could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being.

When men are rightly occupied their amusement grows out of their work as the color-petals out of a fruitful flower.

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

Sometimes gentle sometimes capricious sometimes awful never the same for two moments together almost human in its passions almost spiritual in its tenderness almost Divine in its infinity.

Cookery means…English thoroughness, French art, and Arabian hospitality; it means the knowledge of all fruits and herbs and balms and spices; it means carefulness, inventiveness, and watchfulness.

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

It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.

When I have been unhappy I have heard an opera ... and it seemed the shrieking of winds when I am happy a sparrow's chirp is delicious to me. But it is not the chirp that makes me happy but I that make it sweet.

No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy.

To be taught to read—what is the use of that, if you know not whether what you read is false or true? To be taught to write or to speak—but what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think—nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, and both true.

Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.

Let us then understand at once that change or variety is as much a necessity to the human heart and brain in buildings as in books; that there is no merit, though there is some occasional use, in monotony; and that we must no more expect to derive either pleasure or profit from an architecture whose ornaments are of one pattern, and whose pillars are of one proportion, than we should of a universe in which the clouds were all of one shape, and the trees all of one shape.

One of the major obstacles impeding any positive future change in our lives is that we are too busy with our current work or activity. Levi quit his tax-work, Peter stopped fishing at lake, Paul ceased being a priest. They all left their jobs because they thought it was necessary.

Endurance is nobler than strength and patience than beauty.

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.

Nearly all our associations are determined by chance or necessity; and restricted within a narrow circle. We cannot know whom we would; and those whom we know, we cannot have at our side when we most need them. All the higher circles of human intelligence are, to those beneath, only momentarily and partially open... there is a society continually open to us, of people who will talk to us as long as we like, whatever our rank or occupation; — talk to us in the best words they can choose, and of the things nearest their hearts. And this society, because it is so numerous and so gentle, and can be kept waiting around us all day long, — kings and statesmen lingering patiently, not to grant audience, but to gain it! — in those plainly furnished and narrow ante-rooms, our bookcase shelves, — we make no account of that company, — perhaps never listen to a word they would say, all day long!

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