John Ruskin Quotes
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There is no law of history any more than of a kaleidoscope.
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If there be any one principle more widely than another confessed by every utterance, or more sternly than another imprinted on every atom of the visible creation, that principle is not liberty, but law.
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Value is the life-giving power of anything; cost, the quantity of labour required to produce it; its price, the quantity of labourwhich its possessor will take in exchange for it.
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God intends no man to live in this world without working, but it seems to me no less evident that He intends every man to be happy in his work.
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Men are more evanescent than pictures, yet one sorrows for lost friends, and pictures are my friends. I have none others. I am never long enough with men to attach myself to them; and whatever feelings of attachment I have are to material things.
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Such help as we can give to each other in this world is a debt to each other; and the man who perceives a superiority or a capacity in a subordinate, and neither confesses nor assists it, is not merely the withholder of kindness, but the committer of injury.
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Unless we perform divine service with every willing act of our life, we never perform it at all.
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You can only possess beauty through understanding it.
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Genius is only a superior power of seeing.
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The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.
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No divine terror will ever be found in the work of the man who wastes a colossal strength in elaborating toys; for the first lesson that terror is sent to teach us is, the value of the human soul, and the shortness of mortal time.
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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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Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, that the sight of them may contribute to his mental health, power, and pleasure.
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There are, indeed, two forms of discontent: one laborious, the other indolent and complaining. We respect the man of laborious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is peace, or his ambition meekness. It is because of the special connection of meekness with contentment that it is promised that the meek shall 'inherit the earth.' Neither covetous men, nor the grave, can inherit anything; they can but consume. Only contentment can possess.
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It is a matter of the simplest demonstration, that no man can be really appreciated but by his equal or superior.
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The man who can see all gray, and red, and purples in a peach, will paint the peach rightly round, and rightly altogether. But the man who has only studied its roundness may not see its purples and grays, and if he does not will never get it to look like a peach; so that great power over color is always a sign of large general art-intellect.
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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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Greatness is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but the expression of the mind of a God-made great man.
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There is no harm in anybody thinking that Christ is in bread. The harm is in the expectation of His presence in gunpowder.
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Which of us is to do the hard and dirty work for the restand for what pay? Who is to do the pleasant and clean work, and for what pay?
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Do not think of your faults, still less of other's faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.
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To follow art for the sake of being a great man, and therefore to cast about continually for some means of achieving position or attracting admiration, is the surest way of ending in total extinction.
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Absolute and entire ugliness is rare.
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A little group of wise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools.