John Ruskin Quotes
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Why is one man richer than another? Because he is more industrious, more persevering and more sagacious.
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Milton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak.
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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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Everything that you can see in the world around you presents itself to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colors.
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Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.
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But I beg you to observe that there is a wide difference between being captains or governors of work, and taking the profits of it. It does not follow, because you are general of an army, that you are to take all the treasure, or land, it wins; (if it fight for treasure or land); neither, because you are king of a nation, that you are to consume all the profits of the nation's work.
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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.
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You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.
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But if, indeed, there be a nobler life in us than in these strangely moving atoms; if, indeed, there is an eternal difference between the fire which inhabits them, and that which animates us,--it must be shown, by each of us in his appointed place, not merely in the patience, but in the activity of our hope, not merely by our desire, but our labor, for the time when the dust of the generations of men shall be confirmed for foundations of the gates of the city of God.
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The power of painter or poet to describe what he calls an ideal thing depends upon its being to him not an ideal but a real thing. No man ever did or ever will work well but either from actual sight or sight of faith.
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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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Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.
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It is a good and safe rule to sojourn in every place as if you meant to spend your life there, never omitting an opportunity of doing a kindness, or speaking a true word, or making a friend.
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All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.
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Failure is less attributable to either insufficiency of means or impatience of labours than to a confused understanding of the thing actually to be done.
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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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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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An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind.
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The step between practical and theoretic science, is the step between the miner and the geologist, the apocathecary and the chemist.
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You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself.
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All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.
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I have always found that the less we speak of our intentions, the more chance there is of our realizing them.
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It is, indeed, right that we should look for, and hasten, so far as in us lies, the coming of the day of God; but not that we should check any human effort by anticipations of its approach. We shall hasten it best by endeavoring to work out the tasks that are appointed for us here; and, therefore, reasoning as if the world were to continue under its existing dispensation, and the powers which have just been granted to us were to be continued through myriads of future ages.
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A nation which lives a pastoral and innocent life never decorates the shepherd's staff or the plough-handle; but races who live by depredation and slaughter nearly always bestow exquisite ornaments on the quiver, the helmet, and the spear.