Best 551 quotes of John Ruskin on MyQuotes

A book worth reading is worth buying.

Absolute ugliness is admitted as rarely as perfect beauty; but degrees of it more or less distinct are associated with whatever has the nature of death and sin, just as beauty is associated with what has the nature of virtue and of life.

A forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable, in effect; a mass of one species of tree is sublime.

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.

A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.

A little group of wise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools.

A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.

All are to be men of genius in their degree,--rivulets or rivers, it does not matter, so that the souls be clear and pure; not dead walls encompassing dead heaps of things, known and numbered, but running waters in the sweet wilderness of things unnumbered and unknown, conscious only of the living banks, on which they partly refresh and partly reflect the flowers, and so pass on.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

All great art is the expression of man's delight in God's work, not his own.

All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.

All great song, from the first day when human lips contrived syllables, has been sincere song.

All men who have sense and feeling are being continually helped; they are taught by every person they meet, and enriched by everything that falls in their way. The greatest, is he who has been oftenest aided. Originality is the observing eye.

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.

All really great pictures exhibit the general habits of nature, manifested in some peculiar, rare, and beautiful way.

All that is good in art is the expression of one soul talking to another, and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it.

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.

All the best things and treasures of this world are not to be produced by each generation for itself; but we are all intended, not to carve our work in snow that will melt, but each and all of us to be continually rolling a great white gathering snow-ball, higher and higher, larger and larger, along the Alps of human power.

All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be effort, and the law of human judgment, mercy.

All true opinions are living, and show their life by being capable of nourishment; therefore of change. But their change is that of a tree not of a cloud.

All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.

All you have really to do is to keep your back as straight as you can; and not think about what is upon it. The real and essential meaning of "virtue" is that straightness of back.

Along the iron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the fiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every hour. All vitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the central cities; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds on the city gates.

Always stand by form against force.

A man is born an artist as a hippopotamus is born a hippopotamus; and you can no more make yourself one than you can make yourself a giraffe.

A man is known to his dog by the smell, to his tailor by the coat, to his friend by the smile; each of these know him, but how little or how much depends on the dignity of the intelligence. That which is truly and indeed characteristic of the man is known only to God.

An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.

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.

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?

And remember, child, that nothing is ever done beautifully, which is done in rivalship; or nobly, which is done in pride.

And thus, in full, there are four classes: the men who feel nothing, and therefore see truly; the men who feel strongly, think weakly, and see untruly (second order of poets); the men who feel strongly, think strongly, and see truly (first order of poets); and the men who, strong as human creatures can be, are yet submitted to influences stronger than they, and see in a sort untruly, because what they see is inconceivably above them. This last is the usual condition of prophetic inspiration.

And with respect to the mode in which these general principles affect the secure possession of property, so far am I from invalidating such security, that the whole gist of these papers will be found ultimately to aim at an extension in its range; and whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

An infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of all truly great men.

Another of the strange and evil tendencies of the present day is the decoration of the railroad station... There was never more flagrant nor impertinent folly than the smallest portion of ornament in anything connected with the railroads... Railroad architecture has or would have a dignity of its own if it were only left to its work.

Anything which elevates the mind is sublime. Greatness of matter, space, power, virtue or beauty, are all sublime.

... 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)

Architecture concerns itself only with those characters of an edifice which are above and beyond its common use.

Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, that the sight of them may contribute to his mental health, power, and pleasure.

Architecture ... the adaptation of form to resist force.

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

As in the instances of alchemy, astrology, witchcraft, and other such popular creeds, political economy, has a plausible idea at the root of it.

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.

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.

A splendour of miscellaneous spirits.

As unity demanded for its expression what at first might have seemed its opposite--variety; so repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite--energy. It is the most unfailing test of beauty; nothing can be ignoble that possesses it, nothing right that has it not.

At every moment of our lives we should be trying to find out, not in what we differ with other people, but in what we agree with them.

A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.

Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light.

Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer.

Being thus prepared for us in all ways, and made beautiful, and good for food, and for building, and for instruments of our hands, this race of plants, deserving boundless affection and admiration from us, becomes, in proportion to their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of our being in right temper of mind and way of life; so that no one can be far wrong in either who loves trees enough, and everyone is assuredly wrong in both who does not love them, if his life has brought them in his way.