John Ruskin Quotes
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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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It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little.
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Give me some mud off a city crossing, some ochre out of a gravel pit and a little whitening and some coal dust and I will paint you a luminous picture if you give me time to gradate my mud and subdue my dust.
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Trust thou thy Love: if she be proud, is she not sweet? Trust thou thy love: if she be mute, is she not pure? Lay thou thy soul full in her hands, low at her feet- Fail, Sun and Breath!-yet, for thy peace, she shall endure.
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Now the basest thought possible concerning man is, that he has no spiritual nature; and the foolishest misunderstanding of him possible is, that he has, or should have, no animal nature. For his nature is nobly animal, nobly spiritual,--coherently and irrevocably so; neither part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy the other.
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So long as we see the stones and joints, and are not deceived as to the points of support in any piece of architecture, we may rather praise than regret the dexterous artifices which compel us to feel as if there were fibre in its shafts and life in its branches.
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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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When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.
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There is a certain period of the soul-culture when it begins to interfere with some of characters of typical beauty belonging to the bodily frame, the stirring of the intellect wearing down the flesh, and the moral enthusiasm burning its way out to heaven, through the emaciation of the earthen vessel; and there is, in this indication of subduing the mortal by the immortal part, an ideal glory of perhaps a purer and higher range than that of the more perfect material form. We conceive, I think, more nobly of the weak presence of Paul than of, the fair and ruddy countenance of David.
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A splendour of miscellaneous spirits.
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Production does not consist in things laboriously made, but in things serviceably consumable; and the question for the nation is not how much labour it employs, but how much life it produces.
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Commerce is the agency by which the power of choice is obtained.
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No one can do me any good by loving me; I have more love than I need or could do any good with; but people do me good by making me love them - which isn't easy.
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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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One of the prevailing sources of misery and crime is in the generally accepted assumption, that because things have been wrong a long time, it is impossible they will ever be right.
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Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen from bishops desiring power more than light. They want authority, not outlook.
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Ornamentation is the principal part of architecture, considered as a subject of fine art.
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Better a child should be ignorant of a thousand truths than have consecrated in its heart a single lie.
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All really great pictures exhibit the general habits of nature, manifested in some peculiar, rare, and beautiful way.
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You may sell your work, but not your soul.
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Engraving is, in brief terms, the Art of Scratch.
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He who can take no interest in what is small will take false interest in what is great.
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Society has sacrificed its virtues to the Goddess of Getting Along.
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... the weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which, worthily used, will be a gift also to his race forever.