John Ruskin Quotes
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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 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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There are many religions, but there is only one morality.
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I desire ... to leave this one great fact clearly stated. THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE.
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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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God never imposes a duty without giving time to do it.
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See! This our fathers did for us.
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In mortals there is a care for trifles which proceeds from love and conscience, and is most holy; and a care for trifles which comes of idleness and frivolity, and is most base. And so, also, there is a gravity proceeding from thought, which is most noble; and a gravity proceeding from dulness and mere incapability of enjoyment, which is most base.
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Sky is the part of creation in which Nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her.
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Sculpture is not the mere cutting of the form of anything in stone; it is the cutting of the effect of it. Very often the true form, in the marble, would not be in the least like itself.
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Know thyself, for through thyself only thou canst know God.
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When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work.
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If you do not wish for His kingdom do not pray for it. But if you do you must do more than pray for it, you must work for it.
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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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Obey something, and you will have a chance to learn what is best to obey. But if you begin by obeying nothing, you will end by obeying the devil and all his invited friends.
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The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.
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The highest thoughts are those which are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any composition and praise to which it is entitled are in exact proportion to its dependency of language or expression.
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All men who have sense and feeling are being continually helped; they are taught by every person they meet, and enriched by everything that falls in their way. The greatest, is he who has been oftenest aided. Originality is the observing eye.
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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 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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The spirit needs several sorts of food of which knowledge is only one.
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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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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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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.