John Ruskin Quotes
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I believe that there is no test of greatness in periods, nations or men more sure than the development, among them or in them, of a noble grotesque, and no test of comparative smallness or limitation, of one kind or another, more sure than the absence of grotesque invention, or incapability of understanding it.
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A little group of wise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools.
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Ship of the line is the most honourable thing that man, as a gregarious animal, has ever produced.
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Mighty of heart, mighty of mind, magnanimous-to be this is indeed to be great in life.
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To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.
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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 greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, nor in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy... which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity.
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Architecture is the work of nations.
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You cannot have good architecture merely by asking people's advice on occasion. All good architecture is the expression of national life and character; and it is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for beauty.
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Surely our clergy need not be surprised at the daily increasing distrust in the public mind of the efficacy of prayer.
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Architecture ... the adaptation of form to resist force.
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Hope- the recognition, by true foresight, of better things to be reached here after.
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If men lived like men indeed, their houses would be temples -- temples which we should hardly dare to injure, and in which it would make us holy to be permitted to live; and there must be a strange dissolution of natural affection, a strange unthankfulness for all that homes have given and parents taught, a strange consciousness that we have been unfaithful to our fathers honor, or that our own lives are not such as would make our dwellings sacred to our children, when each man would fain build to himself, and build for the little revolution of his own life only.
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God has lent us the earth for our life; it is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come after us, and whose names are already written in the book of creation, as to us; and we have no right, by anything that we do or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits which it was in our power to bequeath.
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The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers; but they rise behind her steps, not before them.
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Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.
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People cannot live by lending money to one another.
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No one can become rich by the efforts of only their toil, but only by the discovery of some method of taxing the labor of others.
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True taste is forever growing, learning, reading, worshipping, laying its hand upon its mouth because it is astonished, casting its shoes from off its feet because it finds all ground holy.
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Not without design does God write the music of our lives. Be it ours to learn the time, and not be discouraged at the rests. If we say sadly to ourselves, "There is no music in a rest," let us not forget " there is the making of music in it." The making of music is often a slow and painful process in this life. How patiently God works to teach us! How long He waits for us to learn the lesson!
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Color is, in brief terms, the type of love. Hence it is especially connected with the blossoming of the earth; and again, with its fruits; also, with the spring and fall of the leaf, and with the morning and evening of the day, in order to show the waiting of love about the birth and death of man.
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My mother's influence in molding my character was conspicuous. She forced me to learn daily long chapters of the Bible by heart. To that discipline and patient, accurate resolve I owe not only much of my general power of taking pains, but of the best part of my taste for literature.
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Remember always, in painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter will be your manner, and the fewer your words; and in painting, as in all the arts and acts of life the secret of high success will be found, not in a fretful and various excellence, but in a quiet singleness of justly chosen aim.
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To be taught to read—what is the use of that, if you know not whether what you read is false or true? To be taught to write or to speak—but what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think—nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, and both true.