John Ruskin Quotes

438 Sourced Quotes

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts—the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others; but of the three, the only quite trustworthy one is the last. The acts of a nation may be triumphant by its good fortune; and its words mighty by the genius of a few of its children: but its art, only by the general gifts and common sympathies of the race.

John Ruskin
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?

John Ruskin
The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.

John Ruskin
The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it.

John Ruskin
The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.

John Ruskin
Which of us…is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay? Who is to do the pleasant and clean work, and for what pay?

John Ruskin
Why is one man richer than another? Because he is more industrious, more persevering and more sagacious.

John Ruskin
Ship of the line is the most honourable thing that man, as a gregarious animal, has ever produced.

John Ruskin
Wise laws and just restraints are to a noble nation not chains, but chains of mail, — strength and defense, though something of an incumbrance.

John Ruskin
No small misery is caused by overworked and unhappy people, in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of work itself.

John Ruskin
If you want knowledge, you must toil for it; if food, you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it: toil is the law.

John Ruskin
Of all God's gifts to the sight of man, colour is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn.

John Ruskin
It is the glistening and softly spoken lie; the amiable fallacy; the patriotic lie of the historian, the provident lie of the politician, the zealous lie of the partisan, the merciful lie of the friend, and the careless lie of each man to himself, that cast that black mystery over humanity, through which we thank any man who pierces, as we would thank one who dug a well in a desert.

John Ruskin
But of them [the builders], and their life, and their toil upon the earth, one reward, one evidence, is left to us in those gray heaps of deep-wrought stone. They have taken with them to the grave their powers, their honors, and their errors; but they have left us their adoration.

John Ruskin
There is a working class - strong and happy - among both rich and poor: there is an idle class - weak, wicked, and miserable - among both rich and poor.

John Ruskin
One of the worst diseases to which the human creature is liable is its disease of thinking.

John Ruskin
I wish they would use English instead of Greek words. When I want to know why a leaf is green, they tell me it is coloured by "chlorophyll," which at first sounds very instructive; but if they would only say plainly that a leaf is coloured green by a thing which is called "green leaf," we should see more precisely how far we had got.

John Ruskin
Men have commonly more pleasure in the criticism which hurts than in that which is innocuous, and are more tolerant of the severity which breaks hearts and ruins fortunes than of that which falls impotently on the grave.

John Ruskin
Multitudes think they like to do evil; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world.

John Ruskin
There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest numbers of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest, who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.

John Ruskin
The great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than the furnace blast, is all in very deed for this -- that we manufacture everything there except men.

John Ruskin
To be taught to read—what is the use of that, if you know not whether what you read is false or true? To be taught to write or to speak—but what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think—nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, and both true.

John Ruskin
There is no climate, no place, and scarcely an hour, in which nature does not exhibit color which no mortal effort can imitate or approach. For all our artificial pigments are, even when seen under the same circumstances, dead and lightless beside her living color; nature exhibits her hues under an intensity of sunlight which trebles their brilliancy.

John Ruskin
When we build, let us think that we build for ever.

John Ruskin
Expression, sentiment, truth to nature, are essential: but all those are not enough. I never care to look at a picture again, if it be ill composed; and if well composed I can hardly leave off looking at it.

John Ruskin