John Ruskin Quotes
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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 actual flower is the plant's highest fulfilment, and are not here exclusively for herbaria, county floras and plant geography: they are here first of all for delight.
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All great song, from the first day when human lips contrived syllables, has been sincere song.
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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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All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.
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There is no action so slight or so mean but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled thereby.
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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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Do justice to your brother, and you will come to love him. But do injustice to him because you don't love him, and you will come to hate him.
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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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An infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of all truly great men.
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We have seen when the earth had to be prepared for the habitation of man, a veil, as it were, of intermediate being was spread between him and its darkness, in which were joined in a subdued measure, the stability and insensibility of the earth, and the passion and perishing of mankind.
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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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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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The Bible is the one Book to which any thoughtful man may go with any honest question of life or destiny and find the answer of God by honest searching.
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In great countries, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents want to make them into adults. In vile countries, the children are always wanting to be adults and the parents want to keep them children.
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Humanity and Immortality consist neither in reason, nor in love; not in the body, nor in the animation of the heart of it, nor in the thoughts and stirrings of the brain of it;--but in the dedication of them all to Him who will raise them up at the last day.
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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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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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Know thyself, for through thyself only thou canst know God.
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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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All that is good in art is the expression of one soul talking to another, and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it.
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A splendour of miscellaneous spirits.
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Our purity of taste is best tested by its universality, for if we can only admire this thing or that, we maybe use that our cause for liking is of a finite and false nature.
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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.