John Ruskin Quotes
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Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
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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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Like other beautiful things in this world, its end (that of a shaft) is to be beautiful; and, in proportion to its beauty, it receives permission to be otherwise useless. We do not blame emeralds and rubies because we cannot make them into heads of hammers.
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Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect in its own bad way.
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Variety is a positive requisite even in the character of our food.
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The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.
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There is no solemnity so deep, to a right-thinking creature, as that of dawn.
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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.
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You must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable-nay, letter by letter... you might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly "illiterate," undeducated person; but if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, - that is to say, with real accuracy- you are for evermore in some measure an educated person.
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Superstition, in all times and among all nations, is the fear of a spirit whose passions are those of a man, whose acts are the acts of a man; who is present in some places, not in others; who makes no places holy and not others; who is kind to one person, unkind to another; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention you pay him, or praise you refuse to him; who is hostile generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrifice of a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. This, whatever form of faith it colors, is the essence of superstition.
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Painting with all its technicalities, difficulties, and peculiar ends, is nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing.
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All are to be men of genius in their degree,--rivulets or rivers, it does not matter, so that the souls be clear and pure; not dead walls encompassing dead heaps of things, known and numbered, but running waters in the sweet wilderness of things unnumbered and unknown, conscious only of the living banks, on which they partly refresh and partly reflect the flowers, and so pass on.
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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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Every hue throughout your work is altered by every touch you add in other places.
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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.
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A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.
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In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.
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One can't be angry when one looks at a penguin.
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Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night.
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The imagination is never governed, it is always the ruling and divine power.
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We need examples of people who, leaving Heaven to decide whether they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, self-possession; and honouring themselves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of peace.
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Nothing can be true which is either complete or vacant; every touch is false which does not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which represents nothing.
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All you have really to do is to keep your back as straight as you can; and not think about what is upon it. The real and essential meaning of 'virtue' is that straightness of back.
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Wise laws and just restraints are to a noble nation not chains, but chains of mail, -- strength and defense, though something of an incumbrance.