John Ruskin Quotes
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A monk of La Trappe, a French soldier of the Imperial Guard, and a thriving mill-owner, supposing each a type, and no more than a type, of his class, are all interesting specimens of humanity, but narrow ones, - so narrow that even all the three together would not make up a perfect man.
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One of the worst diseases to which the human creature is liable is its disease of thinking.
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All real and wholesome enjoyments possible to people have been just as possible to them since first they were made of the earth as they are now; and they are possible to them chiefly in peace. To watch the corn grow, and the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over plowshare or spade; to read, to think, to love, to hope: these are the things that make people happy.
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The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.
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Candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, the sailor perceives these decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day; and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all; and they give plenary and brief without listening to confession.
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We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it.
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Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
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... A power of obtaining veracity in the representation of material and tangible things, which, within certain limits and conditions, is unimpeachable, has now been placed in the hands of all men, almost without labour. (1853)
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All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.
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He who offers God a second place offers Him no place.
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It is eminently a weariable faculty, eminently delicate, and incapable of bearing fatigue; so that if we give it too many objects at a time to employ itself upon, or very grand ones for a long time together, it fails under the effort, becomes jaded, exactly as the limbs do by bodily fatigue, and incapable of answering any farther appeal till it has had rest.
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There is a satisfactory and available power in every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all persons have the power of learning French, Latin or arithmetic, in a decent and useful degree.
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Whenever I did anything wrong, stupid or hard-hearted, and I have done many things that were all three, my mother always said "it is because you were too much indulged."
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Men don't and can't live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don't live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of laborers Unions.
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I fear uniformity. You cannot manufacture great men any more than you can manufacture gold.
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If you want to work for the kingdom of God, and to bring it, and enter into it, there is just one condition to be first accepted. You must enter into it as children, or not at all.
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That which is required in order to the attainment of accurate conclusions respecting the essence of the Beautiful is nothing morethan earnest, loving, and unselfish attention to our impressions of it.
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A gentleman's first characteristic is that fineness of structure in the body which renders it capable of the most delicate sensation; and of structure in the mind which renders it capable of the most delicate sympathies; one may say simply "fineness of nature.
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In one point of view, Gothic is not only the best, but the only rational architecture, as being that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble.
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The world is full of vulgar Purists, who bring discredit on all selection by the silliness of their choice; and this the more, because the very becoming a Purist is commonly indicative of some slight degree of weakness, readiness to be offended, or narrowness of understanding of the ends of things.
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Courage, so far as it is a sign of race, is peculiarly the mark of a gentleman or a lady; but it becomes vulgar if rude or insensitive, while timidity is not vulgar, if it be a characteristic of race or fineness of make. A fawn is not vulgar in being timid, nor a crocodile "gentle" because courageous.
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Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity.
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The fact of our deriving constant pleasure from whatever is a type or semblance of divine attributes, and from nothing but that which is so, is the most glorious of all that can be demonstrated of human nature; it not only sets a great gulf of specific separation between us and the lower animals, but it seems a promise of a communion ultimately deep, close, and conscious, with the Being whose darkened manifestations we here feebly and unthinkingly delight in.
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Your art is to be the praise of something that you love. It may only be the praise of a shell or a stone.