John Ruskin Quotes
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A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.
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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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He who can take no interest in what is small will take false interest in what is great.
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All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.
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The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.
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Engraving is, in brief terms, the Art of Scratch.
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If some people really see angels where others see only empty space, let them paint the angels: only let not anybody else think they can paint an angel too, on any calculated principles of the angelic.
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The best work never was and never will be done for money.
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Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to oar moral nature in its purity and perfection.
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To use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own, and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.
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There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest numbers of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest, who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.
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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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All really great pictures exhibit the general habits of nature, manifested in some peculiar, rare, and beautiful way.
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God alone can finish.
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If the design of the building be originally bad, the only virtue it can ever possess will be signs of antiquity.
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To do your own work well, whether it be for life or death.
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Society has sacrificed its virtues to the Goddess of Getting Along.
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Bread of flour is good; but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book.
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It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.
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There is rough work to be done, and rough men must do it; there is gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do it.
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However good you may be you have faults; however dull you may be you can find out what some of them are, and however slight they may be you had better make some - not too painful, but patient efforts to get rid of them.
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The Spirit power begins in directing the Animal power to other than egoistic ends.
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To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.
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In the range of inorganic nature. I doubt if any object can be found more perfectly beautiful than a fresh, deep snowdrift, seen under warm light.