John Ruskin Quotes
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We may, without offending any laws of good taste, require of an architect, as we do of a novelist, that he should be not only correct, but entertaining.
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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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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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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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To do your own work well, whether it be for life or death.
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The names of great painters are like passing-bells: in the name of Velasquez you hear sounded the fall of Spain; .in the name of Titian, that of Venice; in the name of Leonardo, that of Milan; in the name of Raphael, that of Rome. And there is profound justice in this, for in proportion to the nobleness of the power is the guilt of its use for purposes vain or vile; and hitherto the greater the art, the more surely has it been used, and used solely, for the decoration of pride or the provoking of sensuality.
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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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Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them.
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The Spirit power begins in directing the Animal power to other than egoistic ends.
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Our large trading cities bear to me very nearly the aspect of monastic establishments in which the roar of the mill-wheel and the crane takes the place of other devotional music, and in which the worship of Mammon and Moloch is conducted with a tender reverence and an exact propriety; the merchant rising to his Mammon matins, with the self-denial of an anchorite, and expiating the frivolities into which he maybe beguiled in the course of the day by late attendance at Mammon vespers.
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All great song, from the first day when human lips contrived syllables, has been sincere song.
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The art of drawing which is of more real importance to the human race than that of writing...should be taught to every child just as writing is.
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When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.
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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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The entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things — not merely industrious, but to love industry — not merely learned, but to love knowledge — not merely pure, but to love purity — not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice.
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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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Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves.
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The only way to understand these difficult parts of the Bible, or even to approach them with safety, is first to read and obey the easy ones.
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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.
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The Training which Makes Men Happiest in themselves ... also Makes Them Most Serviceable to Others.
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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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Multitudes think they like to do evil; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world.
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Architecture concerns itself only with those characters of an edifice which are above and beyond its common use.
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When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work.