John Ruskin Quotes
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There is no climate, no place, and scarcely an hour, in which nature does not exhibit color which no mortal effort can imitate or approach. For all our artificial pigments are, even when seen under the same circumstances, dead and lightless beside her living color; nature exhibits her hues under an intensity of sunlight which trebles their brilliancy.
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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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Whether we force the man's property from him by pinching his stomach, or pinching his fingers, makes some difference anatomically; morally, none whatsoever.
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It is impossible to tell you the perfect sweetness of the lips and closed eyes, nor the solemnity of the seal of death which is set upon the whole figure. It is, in every way, perfect--truth itself, but truth selected with inconceivable refinement of feeling.
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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.
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Though nature is constantly beautiful, she does not exhibit her highest powers of beauty constantly, for then they would satiate us and pall upon our senses. It is necessary to their appreciation that they should be rarely shown. Her finest touches are things which must be watched for; her most perfect passages of beauty are the most evanescent.
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Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.
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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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How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?
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And besides; the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one; distribute the earth as you will, the principal question remains inexorable, Who is to dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay?
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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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It is better to be nobly remembered than nobly born.
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I believe the first test of a truly great man is in his humility.
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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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No peace was ever won from fate by subterfuge or argument; no peace is ever in store for any of us, but that which we shall win by victory over shame or sin--victory over the sin that oppresses, as well as over that which corrupts.
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It is his restraint that is honorable to a person, not their liberty.
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Pleasure comes through toil, and not by self indulgence and indolence. When one gets to love work, his life is a happy one.
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The history of humanity is not the history of its wars, but the history of its households.
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It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.
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My entire delight was in observing without being myself noticed,- if I could have been invisible, all the better. . . to be in the midst of it, and rejoice and wonder at it, and help it if I could, - happier if it needed no help of mine, - this was the essential love of Nature in me, this the root of all that I have usefully become, and the light of all that I have rightly learned.
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As long as there are cold and nakedness in the land around you, so long can there be no question at all but that splendor of dress is a crime. In due time, when we have nothing better to set people to work at, it may be right to let them make lace and cut jewels; but as long as there are any who have no blankets for their beds, and no rags for their bodies, so long it is blanket-making and tailoring we must set people to work at, not lace.
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If you want knowledge, you must toil for it; if food, you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it: toil is the law.
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Human work must be done thoroughly and honourably because we are now men; whether we ever expect to be angels, or ever were slugs, being practically no matter.
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We are, after all, only trustees of the wealth we possess. Without the community and its resources... there would be little wealth for anyone.