Words matter. These are the best John Ruskin Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.
The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.
The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.
When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.
Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts – the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.
Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.
The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don’t mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.
He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.
Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.
Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them.
It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.
Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
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.
Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.
Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities.
There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves.
There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man’s lawful prey.
Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor.
Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.
No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.
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.
The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world… to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.
Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.
That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.
The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work.
A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.
No human being, however great, or powerful, was ever so free as a fish.
When we build, let us think that we build for ever.
Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.
Men cannot not live by exchanging articles, but producing them. They live by work not trade.
To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.
The sky is the part of creation in which nature has done for the sake of pleasing man.
No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.
Civilization is the making of civil persons.
Men don’t and can’t live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don’t live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of laborers Unions.
Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.
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.
It is his restraint that is honorable to a person, not their liberty.
Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions.
It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.
Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.
Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.
There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.
The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.
To give alms is nothing unless you give thought also.
An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind.
The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men’s lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.
What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?
Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.
The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.
It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately.
Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.
Man’s only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him. Reverence something to be worshipped by him, and love something to be cherished by him, forever.
We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it.
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.
No lying knight or lying priest ever prospered in any age, but especially not in the dark ones. Men prospered then only in following an openly declared purpose, and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds.
No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.
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.
Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.
You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil.
To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.
It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.
How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?
No person who is well bred, kind and modest is ever offensively plain; all real deformity means want for manners or of heart.
It is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, can never be recalled.
