John Ruskin Quotes
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To yield reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at his disposal, is not slavery; often, it is the noblest state in which a man can live in this world.
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We must note carefully what distinction there is between a healthy and a diseased love of change; for as it was in healthy love of change that the Gothic architecture rose, it was partly in consequence of diseased love of change that it was destroyed.
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It is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity.
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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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Don't just look at buildings ... watch them.
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Every duty we omit obscures some truth we should have known.
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An infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of all truly great men.
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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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One evening, when I was yet in my nurse's arms, I wanted to touch the tea urn, which was boiling merrily ... My nurse would have taken me away from the urn, but my mother said "Let him touch it." So I touched it - and that was my first lesson in the meaning of liberty.
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On the whole, it is patience which makes the final difference between those who succeed or fail in all things. All the greatest people have it in an infinite degree, and among the less, the patient weak ones always conquer the impatient strong.
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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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We are only advancing in life, whose hearts are getting softer, our blood warmer, our brains quicker, and our spirits entering into living peace.
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Men are merely on a lower or higher stage of an eminence, whose summit is God's throne infinitely above all; and there is just as much reason for the wisest as for the simplest man being discontent with his position, as respects the real quantity of knowledge he possesses.
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You cannot have good architecture merely by asking people's advice on occasion. All good architecture is the expression of national life and character; and it is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for beauty.
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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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There is in every animal's eye a dim image and gleam of humanity, a flash of strange light through which their life looks out and up to our great mystery of command over them, and claims the fellowship of the creature if not of the soul.
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An artist should be well read in the best books, and thoroughly high bred, both in heart and bearing. In a word, he should be fit for the best society, and should keef out of it.
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The plea of ignorance will never take away our responsibilities.
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I desire ... to leave this one great fact clearly stated. THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE.
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You will never love art well until you love what she mirrors better.
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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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True taste is forever growing, learning, reading, worshipping, laying its hand upon its mouth because it is astonished, casting its shoes from off its feet because it finds all ground holy.
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All of one's life is music, if one touches the notes rightly, and in time.
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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.