John Ruskin Quotes
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It is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity.
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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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I would rather teach drawing that my pupils may learn to love nature, than teach the looking at nature that they may learn to draw.
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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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In order that a man may be happy, it is necessary that he should not only be capable of his work, but a good judge of his work.
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The time is probably near when a new system of architectural laws will be developed, adapted entirely to metallic construction.
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I believe that the first test of a great man is his humility. I don't mean by humility, doubt of his power. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not of them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.
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Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent.
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To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.
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Architecture is the work of nations.
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It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.
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When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for our use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will look upon with praise and thanksgiving in their hearts.
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Hope- the recognition, by true foresight, of better things to be reached here after.
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A forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable, in effect; a mass of one species of tree is sublime.
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You cannot hammer a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does, she will wither without sun; she will decay in her sheath as a narcissus will if you do not give her air enough; she might fall and defile her head in dust if you leave her without help at some moments in her life; but you cannot fetter her; she must take her own fair form and way if she take any.
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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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There is no action so slight or so mean but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled thereby.
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Come, ye cold winds, at January's call, On whistling wings, and with white flakes bestrew The earth.
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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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Science is the knowledge of constant things, not merely of passing events, and is properly less the knowledge of general laws than of existing facts.
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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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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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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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Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.