John Ruskin Quotes
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We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided; but the men.
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All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.
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In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.
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I am far more provoked at being thought foolish by foolish people, than pleased at being thought sensible by sensible people; and the average proportion of the numbers of each is not to my advantage.
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How can man understand God, since he does not yet understand his own mind, with which he endeavors to understand Him? The infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable - not concealed, but incomprehensible. It is a clear infinity - the darkness of the pure, unsearchable sea.
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Blue color is everlastingly appointed by the deity to be a source of delight.
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We may live without her, and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her. How cold is all history, how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears!
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Men cannot not live by exchanging articles, but producing them. They live by work not trade.
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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.
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There is no music in a “rest” that I know of, but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody.
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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?
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It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.
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Without perfect sympathy with the animals around them, no gentleman's education, no Christian education, could be of any possible use.
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To give alms is nothing unless you give thought also.
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No individual rain drop ever considers itself responsible for the flood.
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The great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than the furnace blast, is all in very deed for this -- that we manufacture everything there except men.
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He who has the truth at his heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue.
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Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.
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Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.
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Whenever you see want or misery or degradation in this world about you, then be sure either industry has been wanting, or industry has been in error.
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Our respect for the dead, when they are just dead, is something wonderful, and the way we show it more wonderful still. We show it with black feathers and black horses; we show it with black dresses and black heraldries; we show it with costly obelisks and sculptures of sorrow, which spoil half of our beautiful cathedrals. We show it with frightful gratings and vaults, and lids of dismal stone, in the midst of the quiet grass; and last, and not least, we show it by permitting ourselves to tell any number of falsehoods we think amiable or credible in the epitaph.
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Another of the strange and evil tendencies of the present day is the decoration of the railroad station... There was never more flagrant nor impertinent folly than the smallest portion of ornament in anything connected with the railroads... Railroad architecture has or would have a dignity of its own if it were only left to its work.
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He only is advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into living peace. And the men who have this life in them are the true lords or kings of the earth - they, and they only.
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Civilization is the making of civil persons.