John Ruskin Quotes
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The truths of nature are one eternal change, one infinite variety. There is no bush on the face of the globe exactly like another bush; there are no two trees in the forest whose boughs bend into the same network, nor two leaves on the same tree which could not be told one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike.
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When God shuts a door, He opens a window.
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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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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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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 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.
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It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little.
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A little group of wise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools.
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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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Architecture is the work of nations.
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This is the true nature of home - it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division.
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It is far better to give work that is above a person, than to educate the person to be above their work.
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A man is one whose body has been trained to be the ready servant of his mind; whose passions are trained to be the servants of his will; who enjoys the beautiful, loves truth, hates wrong, loves to do good, and respects others as himself.
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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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People cannot live by lending money to one another.
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So far as I have myself observed, the distinctive character of a child is to live always in the tangible present.
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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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To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.
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A splendour of miscellaneous spirits.
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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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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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Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.
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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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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.