John Ruskin - Sesame and lilies (1865)

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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
How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it.

John Ruskin
The more readily we admit the possibility of our own cherished convictions being mixed with error, the more vital and helpful whatever is right in them will become; and no error is so conclusively fatal as the idea that God will not allow us to err, though He has allowed all other men to do so.

John Ruskin
You must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable-nay, letter by letter... you might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly "illiterate," undeducated person; but if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, - that is to say, with real accuracy- you are for evermore in some measure an educated person.

John Ruskin
The constant duty of every man to his fellows is to ascertain his own powers and special gifts, and to strengthen them for the help of others.

John Ruskin
When the whole world turns clown, and paints itself red with its own hearts blood instead of vermilion, it is something else than comic.

John Ruskin
Commerce is the agency by which the power of choice is obtained.

John Ruskin
The very cheapness of literature is making even wise people forget that if a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. No book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable, until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again; and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it.

John Ruskin
No nation can last which has made a mob of itself, however generous at heart.

John Ruskin
This is the true nature of home - it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division.

John Ruskin
The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as its greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.

John Ruskin
Will you not covet such power as this, and seek such throne as this, and be no more housewives, but queens? There is no putting by that crown; queens you must always be; queens to your lovers; queens to your husbands and sons; queens of higher mystery to the world beyond.... But alas! you are too often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty in the least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest.

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
All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

John Ruskin
Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

John Ruskin
To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.

John Ruskin
You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.

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
And besides; the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one; distribute the earth as you will, the principal question remains inexorable, —Who is to dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay?

John Ruskin
The entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things — not merely industrious, but to love industry — not merely learned, but to love knowledge — not merely pure, but to love purity — not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice.

John Ruskin
Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

John Ruskin
We call ourselves a rich nation, and we are filthy and foolish enough to thumb each other's books out of circulating libraries!

John Ruskin