John Ruskin (1819–1900) was an English critic of art, architecture, and society. A gifted painter and a distinctive prose stylist on top, he influenced the aesthetic values and tastes of Victorian England.
Born in London, Ruskin was educated in Christ Church, Oxford. His prolific writings on art and architecture include Modern Painters (5 vols., 1843–60,) The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849,) and The Stones of Venice (3 vols., 1851–53.) These books established him as the foremost art and social critic of the day.
After 1860, Ruskin devoted himself to social, political, and economic reform. He campaigned for the revival of medieval piety and Christian ideals, especially in opposition to the industrial revolution and the scientific advances of his times.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by John Ruskin
The last act crowns the play.
—John Ruskin
Doing is the great thing. For if, resolutely, people do what is right, in time they come to like doing it.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Action
Every duty which we omit, obscures some truth which we should have known.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Duty
When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.
—John Ruskin
Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Flowers
The finer the nature, the more flaws will show through the clearness of it; and it is a law of this universe that the best things shall be seldomest seen in their best forms.
—John Ruskin
A book worth reading is worth buying.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Books, Reading, Literature
When men are rightfully occupied, then their amusement grows out of their work as the color petals out of a fruitful garden.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Talents, Work, Abilities, Happiness
Nothing is ever done beautifully which is done in rivalship; or nobly, which is done in pride.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Business
Our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves what shall be true for the future.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Future
The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Education, Desire
Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Education
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
Topics: Work
Three forms of asceticism have existed in this weak world.—Religious asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake, as supposed, of religion; seen chiefly in the middle ages.—Military asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of power; seen chiefly in the early days of Sparta and Rome.—And monetary asceticism, consisting in the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of money; seen in the present days of London and Manchester.
—John Ruskin
It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all that he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his readers is sure to skip them.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Writing, Writers, Authors & Writing
The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Work, Success
The enormous influence of novelty—the way in which it quickens observation, sharpens sensation, and exalts sentiment—is not half enough taken note of by us, and is to me a very sorrowful matter. And yet, if we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will become monotonous; and then we are reduced to that old despair, “If water chokes, what will you drink after it?” The two points of practical wisdom in the matter are, first, to be content with as little novelty as possible at a time; and secondly, to preserve, as much as possible, the sources of novelty.
—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
Topics: Literature, Libraries
Genius is only a superior power of seeing.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Genius, Power
I have been more and more convinced, the more I think of it, that, in general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes. All the other passions do occasional good; but whenever pride puts in its word, everything goes wrong; and what it might really be desirable to do, quietly and innocently, it is mortally dangerous to do proudly.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Pride
No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Science, Architecture
Once thoroughly our own knowledge ceases to give us pleasure.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Knowledge
The names of great painters are like passing bells.—In Velasquez you hear sounded the fall of Spain; in Titian, that of Venice; in Leonardo, that of Milan; in Raphael, that of Rome.—And there is profound justice in this; for in proportion to the nobleness of power is the guilt of its use for purposes vain or vile; and hitherto the greater the art the more surely has it been used, and used solely, for the decoration of pride, or the provoking of sensuality.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Art
The buckling on of the knight’s armor by his lady’s hand was not a mere caprice of romantic fashion. It is the type of an eternal truth that the soul’s armor is never well set to the heart unless a woman’s hand has braced it, and it is only when she braces it loosely that the honor of manhood fails.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Woman
The secret of language is the secret of sympathy and its full charm is possible only to the gentle.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Language
Touching plagiarism in general, it is to be remembered that all men who have sense and feeling are being continually helped; they are taught by every person whom they meet and enriched by everything that falls in their way. The greatest is he who has been oftenest aided; and, if the attainments of all human minds could be traced to their real sources, it would be found that the world had been laid most under contribution by the men of most original power, and that every day of their existence deepened their debt, to their race, while it enlarged their gifts to it.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Plagiarism
The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Vanity
Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Reading, Literature, Books
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.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Humanity, Humankind
An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Imagination
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