John Ruskin Quotes
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A book worth reading is worth buying.
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... Amongst all the mechanical poison that this terrible nineteenth century has poured upon men, it has given us at any rate one antidote - the Daguerreotype. (1845)
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A man is born an artist as a hippopotamus is born a hippopotamus; and you can no more make yourself one than you can make yourself a giraffe.
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I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this; was it done with enjoyment, was the carver happy while he was about it?
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It is his restraint that is honorable to a person, not their liberty.
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The best thing in life aren't things.
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Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.
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Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are.
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Repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite,--energy.
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If a great thing can be done, it can be done easily, but this ease is like the of ease of a tree blossoming after long years of gathering strength.
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But I beg you to observe that there is a wide difference between being captains or governors of work, and taking the profits of it. It does not follow, because you are general of an army, that you are to take all the treasure, or land, it wins; (if it fight for treasure or land); neither, because you are king of a nation, that you are to consume all the profits of the nation's work.
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He who has once stood beside the grave, to look back upon the companionship which has been forever closed, feeling how impotent there are the wild love, or the keen sorrow, to give one instant's pleasure to the pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the departed spirit for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur that debt to the heart which can only be discharged to the dust.
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The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it.
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Without mountains the air could not be purified, nor the flowing of the rivers sustained.
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One can't be angry when one looks at a penguin.
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Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test.
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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.
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You may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does.
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Nature is always mysterious and secret in her use of means; and art is always likest her when it is most inexplicable.
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The force of the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbour's pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you.
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Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.
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In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong.
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Genius is only a superior power of seeing.
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No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.