John Ruskin Quotes
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I fear uniformity. You cannot manufacture great men any more than you can manufacture gold.
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It ought to be quite as natural and straightforward a matter for a labourer to take his pension from his parish, because he has deserved well of his parish, as for a man in higher rank to take his pension from his country, because he has deserved well of his country.
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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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We are, after all, only trustees of the wealth we possess. Without the community and its resources... there would be little wealth for anyone.
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No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.
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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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When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.
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What is really desired, under the name of riches, is essentially, power over men ... this power ... is in direct proportion to the poverty of the men over whom it is exercised, and in inverse proportion to the number of persons who are as rich as ourselves.
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There is no climate, no place, and scarcely an hour, in which nature does not exhibit color which no mortal effort can imitate or approach. For all our artificial pigments are, even when seen under the same circumstances, dead and lightless beside her living color; nature exhibits her hues under an intensity of sunlight which trebles their brilliancy.
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The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.
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When the whole world turns clown, and paints itself red with its own hearts blood instead of vermilion, it is something else than comic.
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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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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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You were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased with them, or too grasping to care for what you can not turn to other account than mere delight.
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Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.
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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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The Divine mind is as visible in its full energy of operation on every lowly bank and mouldering stone as in the lifting of the pillars of heaven, and settling the foundation of the earth.
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There is nothing so great or so goodly in creation, but that it is a mean symbol of the gospel of Christ, and of the things He has prepared for them that love Him.
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Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.
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When men do not love their hearth, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have dishonoured both ... Our God is a house – hold God, as well as a heavenly one; He has an altar in every man's dwelling.