John Ruskin Quotes
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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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You will never love art well until you love what she mirrors better.
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Mountains are to the rest of the body of the earth, what violent muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and tendons of its anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with force and convulsive energy, full of expression, passion, and strength.
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The Training which Makes Men Happiest in themselves ... also Makes Them Most Serviceable to Others.
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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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God never imposes a duty without giving time to do it.
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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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The sculptor must paint with his chisel; half his touches are not to realize, but to put power into, the form. They are touches of light and shadow, and raise a ridge, or sink a hollow, not to represent an actual ridge or hollow, but to get a line of light, or a spot of darkness.
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Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.
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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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And remember, child, that nothing is ever done beautifully, which is done in rivalship; or nobly, which is done in pride.
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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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An infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of all truly great men.
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To cultivate sympathy you must be among living creatures, and thinking about them; and to cultivate admiration, you must be among beautiful things and looking at them.
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Know thyself, for through thyself only thou canst know God.
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But whether thus submissively or not, at least be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.
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When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work.
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I cannot but think it an evil sign of a people when their houses are built to last for one generation only.
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What is the cheapest to you now is likely to be the dearest to you in the end.
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Being thus prepared for us in all ways, and made beautiful, and good for food, and for building, and for instruments of our hands, this race of plants, deserving boundless affection and admiration from us, becomes, in proportion to their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of our being in right temper of mind and way of life; so that no one can be far wrong in either who loves trees enough, and everyone is assuredly wrong in both who does not love them, if his life has brought them in his way.
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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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See! This our fathers did for us.
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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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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.