John Ruskin Quotes
-
No one can ask honestly or hopefully to be delivered from temptation unless he has himself honestly and firmly determined to do the best he can to keep out of it.
-
Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.
-
Levi's station in life was the receipt of custom; and Peter's, the shore of Galilee; and Paul's, the antechambers of the High- Priest,- which 'station in life' each had to leave, with brief notice.
-
The object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy them.
-
I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting.
-
The step between practical and theoretic science, is the step between the miner and the geologist, the apocathecary and the chemist.
-
In all things that live there are certain irregularities, and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry.
-
Great art is precisely that which never was, nor will be taught, it is preeminently and finally the expression of the spirits of great men.
-
I believe the first test of a truly great man is in his humility.
-
Though nature is constantly beautiful, she does not exhibit her highest powers of beauty constantly, for then they would satiate us and pall upon our senses. It is necessary to their appreciation that they should be rarely shown. Her finest touches are things which must be watched for; her most perfect passages of beauty are the most evanescent.
-
Every hue throughout your work is altered by every touch you add in other places.
-
You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.
-
Give an earnest-hearted, devoted girl any true work that will make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with the consciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the better for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform itself into a majesty of radiant and beneficent peace.
-
An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind.
-
It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.
-
No small misery is caused by overworked and unhappy people, in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of work itself.
-
The best thing in life aren't things.
-
As long as there are cold and nakedness in the land around you, so long can there be no question at all but that splendor of dress is a crime. In due time, when we have nothing better to set people to work at, it may be right to let them make lace and cut jewels; but as long as there are any who have no blankets for their beds, and no rags for their bodies, so long it is blanket-making and tailoring we must set people to work at, not lace.
-
Repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite,--energy.
-
It is his restraint that is honorable to a person, not their liberty.
-
And besides; the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one; distribute the earth as you will, the principal question remains inexorable, Who is to dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay?
-
Cursing is invoking the assistance of a spirit to help you inflict suffering. Swearing on the other hand, is invoking, only the witness of a spirit to an statement you wish to make.
-
To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.
-
It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.