John Ruskin - Work Quotes

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God intends no man to live in this world without working, but it seems to me no less evident that He intends every man to be happy in his work.

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

John Ruskin
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.

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
When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work, as the colour-petals out of a fruitful flower;—when they are faithfully helpful and compassionate, all their emotions become steady, deep, perpetual, and vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse to the body. But now, having no true business, we pour our whole masculine energy into the false business of money-making; and having no true emotion, we must have false emotions dressed up for us to play with, not innocently, as children with dolls, but guiltily and darkly.

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

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

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

John Ruskin
He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

John Ruskin
In health of mind and body, men should see with their own eyes, hear and speak without trumpets, walk on their feet, not on wheels, and work and war with their arms, not with engine-beams, nor rifles warranted to kill twenty men at a shot before you can see them.

John Ruskin
In order that a man may be happy, it is necessary that he should not only be capable of his work, but a good judge of his work.

John Ruskin
Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

John Ruskin
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