John Ruskin > Quotes

“To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.”
― John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice

“It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.”
― John Ruskin

“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. ”
― John Ruskin

“All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hours, and the books of all Time.”
― John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies

“The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most.”
― John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice

“I believe that the first test of a great man is his humility. I don't mean by humility, doubt of his power. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not of them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.”
― John Ruskin

“A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel.”
― John Ruskin

“Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty if only we have the eyes to see them.”
― John Ruskin

“The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.”
― John Ruskin

“All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.”
― John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing

“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.”
― John Ruskin

“When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.”
― John Ruskin

“A book worth reading is worth owning.”
― John Ruskin

“Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.”
― John Ruskin

“Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless.”
― John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice: Volume I. The Foundations

“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.”
― John Ruskin, Modern Painters: Volume 3. Of Many Things

“No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, or happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than man could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being.”
― John Ruskin, Modern Painters: Volume 3. Of Many Things

“In order that people may be happy in their work,
these three things are needed:
they must be fit for it;
they must not do too much of it;
and they must have a sense of success in it.”
― John Ruskin, Pre-Raphaelitism

“Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.”
― John Ruskin

“Let every dawn of morning be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.”
― John Ruskin, The Two Paths

“There is no wealth but life.”
― John Ruskin, The King of the Golden River

“If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.”
― John Ruskin, Sesame and Lillies: Three Lectures

“He who has truth at his heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue.”
― John Ruskin, Stones of Venice [introductions]

“Education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.”
― John Ruskin, The Crown of the Wild Olive. Four Lectures on Industry and War

“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”
― John Ruskin

“Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.”
― John Ruskin, The Works of John Ruskin, Volume 16: A Joy Forever and The Two Paths

“You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.”
― John Ruskin

“Remember that the most beautiful things in life are often the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.”
― John Ruskin

“Modern traveling is not traveling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.”
― John Ruskin

“You will find it less easy to unroot faults than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do not think of your faults, still less of others faults; in every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong; honor that; rejoice in it and as you can, try to imitate it; and your faults will drop off like dead leaves when their time comes.”
― John Ruskin