John Ruskin Quotes
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Anything which elevates the mind is sublime. Greatness of matter, space, power, virtue or beauty, are all sublime.
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Race is precisely of as much consequence in man as it is in any animal.
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It is not the weariness of mortality, but the strength of divinity, which we have to recognize in all mighty things; and that is just what we now never recognize, but think that we are to do great things by help of iron bars and perspiration. Alas! we shall do nothing that way but lose some pounds of our own weight.
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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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He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.
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It is advisable that a person know at least three things, where they are, where they are going, and what they had best do under the circumstances.
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Cursing is invoking the assistance of a spirit to help you inflict suffering. Swearing on the other hand, is invoking, only the witness of a spirit to an statement you wish to make.
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When we build, let us think that we build for ever.
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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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I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.
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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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Of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, scrannel- pipiest, tongs and boniest doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliest of, that eternityof nothing wasthe deadliest.
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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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Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are.
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The man who says to one, go, and he goeth, and to another, come, and he cometh, has, in most cases, more sense of restraint and difficulty than the man who obeys him.
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Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.
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Many thoughts are so dependent upon the language in which they are clothed that they would lose half their beauty if otherwise expressed.
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In painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter your manner.
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Labor rids us of three great evils; tediousness, vice, and poverty.
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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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Of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave.
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Shadows are in reality, when the sun is shining, the most conspicuous thing in a landscape, next to the highest lights.
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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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The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.