John Ruskin Quotes
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Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.
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There was a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell divine as the vale of Tempe; you might have seen the gods there morning and evening Apollo and the sweet Muses of the Light? You enterprised a railroad you blasted its rocks away? And, now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half-an-hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton.
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Nature is always mysterious and secret in her use of means; and art is always likest her when it is most inexplicable.
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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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As in the instances of alchemy, astrology, witchcraft, and other such popular creeds, political economy, has a plausible idea at the root of it.
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Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.
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Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are.
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The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.
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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 books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.
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He who has once stood beside the grave, to look back upon the companionship which has been forever closed, feeling how impotent there are the wild love, or the keen sorrow, to give one instant's pleasure to the pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the departed spirit for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur that debt to the heart which can only be discharged to the dust.
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One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.
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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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... 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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There is large difference between indolent impatience of labor and intellectual impatience of delay, large difference between leaving things unfinished because we have more to do or because we are satisfied with what we have done.
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Let every dawn of morning be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close: — then let every one of these short lives leave its sure record of some kindly thing done for others — some goodly strength or knowledge gained for yourselves.
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I fear uniformity. You cannot manufacture great men any more than you can manufacture gold.
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Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.
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The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.
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Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions.
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The best thing in life aren't things.
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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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You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil.
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For men to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes - this, nature bade not, - this, God blesses not, - this, humanity for no long time is able to endure.