John Ruskin - Human Quotes

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The art of drawing which is of more real importance to the human race than that of writing...should be taught to every child just as writing is.

John Ruskin
Perhaps nothing is more curious in the history of the human mind than the way in which the science of botany has become oppressed by nomenclature.

John Ruskin
No divine terror will ever be found in the work of the man who wastes a colossal strength in elaborating toys; for the first lesson that terror is sent to teach us is, the value of the human soul, and the shortness of mortal time.

John Ruskin
God shows us in Himself, strange as it may seem, not only authoritative perfection, but even the perfection of obedience--an obedience to His own laws; and in the cumbrous movement of those unwieldiest of his creatures we are reminded, even in His divine essence, of that attribute of uprightness in the human creature "that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not.

John Ruskin
Wherever the human mind is healthy and vigorous in all its proportions, great in imagination and emotion no less than in intellect, and not overborne by an undue or hardened pre-eminence of the mere reasoning faculties, there the grotesque will exist in full energy.

John Ruskin
God will put up with a great many things in the human heart, but there is one thing that He will not put up with in it--a second place. He who offers God a second place, offers Him no place.

John Ruskin
Every good piece of art... involves first essentially the evidence of human skill, and the formation of an actually beautiful thing by it.

John Ruskin
The value of architecture depended on two distinct characters: — the one, the impression it receives from human power; the other, the image it bears of the natural creation.

John Ruskin
Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test.

John Ruskin
We must never lose hold of the principle that every flower is meant to be seen by human creatures with human eyes, as by spiders with spider eyes.

John Ruskin
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.

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

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

John Ruskin
In all things that live there are certain irregularities, and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry.

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 eye is continually influenced by what it cannot detect; nay, it is not going too far, to say that it is most influenced by what it detects least. Let the painter define, if he can, the variations of lines on which depend the change of expression in the human countenance.

John Ruskin
The word "Blue" does not mean the sensation caused by a gentian on the human eye; but it means the power of producing that sensation: and this power is always there, in the thing, whether we are there to experience it or not, and would remain there though there were not a man left on the face of the earth.

John Ruskin
Of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave.

John Ruskin
Human work must be done thoroughly and honourably because we are now men; whether we ever expect to be angels, or ever were slugs, being practically no matter.

John Ruskin
No human actions ever were intended by the Maker of men to be guided by balances of expediency, but by balances of justice.

John Ruskin
No human being, however great, or powerful, was ever so free as a fish.

John Ruskin
Of all the bête, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-blooded stuff I ever saw on a human stage, that thing last night beat — as far as the acting and story went — and of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, tuneless and scrannelpipiest — tongs and boniest — doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest, so far as the sound went. I never was so relieved, so far as I can remember in my life, by the stopping of any sound — not excepting railway whistles — as I was by the cessation of the cobbler's bellowing.
On Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger

John Ruskin
Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect in its own bad way.

John Ruskin
Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them.

John Ruskin
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.

John Ruskin
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
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.

John Ruskin