John Ruskin Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings by John Ruskin
John Ruskin Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from John Ruskin on Wise Famous Quotes.
Labour without joy is base. Labour without sorrow is base. Sorrow without labour is base. Joy without labour is base.
The relative majesty of buildings depends more on the weight and vigour of their masses than any other tribute of their design.
Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.
The first duty of a state is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed and educated till it attains years of discretion.
The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.
It is not the church we want, but the sacrifice; not the emotion of admiration, but the act of adoration; not the gift, but the giving.
The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as the greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.
Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves; and art exclusively with things as they affect the human sense and human soul.
It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.
Pleasure comes through toil, and not by self indulgence and indolence. When one gets to love work, his life is a happy one.
In the utmost solitudes of nature, the existence of hell seems to me as legibly declared by a thousand spiritual utterances as that of heaven.
I am almost sick and giddy with the quantity of things in my head, all tempting and wanting to be worked out.
Whenever you see want or misery or degradation in this world about you, then be sure either industry has been wanting, or industry has been in error.
Curiosity is a gift, a capacity of pleasure in knowing, which if you destroy, you make yourself cold and dull.
Government and cooperation are in all things the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, the laws of death.
Many thoughts are so dependent upon the language in which they are clothed that they would lose half their beauty if otherwise expressed.
Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.
We are, after all, only trustees of the wealth we possess. Without the community and its resources ... there would be little wealth for anyone.
Contrast increases the splendor of beauty, but it disturbs its influence; it adds to its attractiveness, but diminishes its power.
I used to lie down on the grass and draw the blades as they grew - until every square foot of meadow, or mossy bank, became a possession to me.
The power of association is stronger than the power of beauty; therefore, the power of association is the power of beauty.
As in the instances of alchemy, astrology, witchcraft, and other such popular creeds, political economy, has a plausible idea at the root of it.
If you do not wish for His kingdom, don't pray for it. But if you do, you must do more than pray for it, you must work for it.
In order that a man may be happy, it is necessary that he should not only be capable of his work, but a good judge of his work.
We are only advancing in life, whose hearts are getting softer, our blood warmer, our brains quicker, and our spirits entering into living peace.
It does not matter what the whip is; it is none the less a whip, because you have cut thongs for it out of your own souls.
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.
There is nothing so small but that we may honor God by asking His guidance of it, or insult Him by taking it into our own hands.
If the design of the building be originally bad, the only virtue it can ever possess will be signs of antiquity.
There is no action so slight or so mean but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled thereby.
You shall have thousands of gold pieces; - thousands of thousands - millions - mountains of gold: where will you keep them?
The proof of a thing's being right is that it has power over the heart; that it excites us, wins us, or helps us.
I do not believe that ever any building was truly great, unless it had mighty masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow mingled with its surface.
Your art is to be the praise of something that you love. It may only be the praise of a shell or a stone.
In the range of inorganic nature. I doubt if any object can be found more perfectly beautiful than a fresh, deep snowdrift, seen under warm light.
It is advisable that a person know at least three things, where they are, where they are going, and what they had best do under the circumstances.
No person who is well bred, kind and modest is ever offensively plain; all real deformity means want for manners or of heart.
If a great thing can be done, it can be done easily, but this ease is like the of ease of a tree blossoming after long years of gathering strength.
God intends no man to live in this world without working, but it seems to me no less evident that He intends every man to be happy in his work.
Multitudes think they like to do evil; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world.
Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy.Bothyourreligionand policy must be basedon it.
No one can become rich by the efforts of only their toil, but only by the discovery of some method of taxing the labor of others.
A forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable, in effect; a mass of one species of tree is sublime.
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.
To speak and act truth with constancy and precision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps as meretorious, as to speak it under intimidation or penalty
What we think or what we know or what we believe is in the end of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do
It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.
Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor.