Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Slavery
Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth. I find this more and more every day: an infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of all the truly great men. It is sure to involve a relative intensity of disdain towards base things, and an appearance of sternness and arrogance in the eyes of all hard, stupid, and vulgar people.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Inheritance, Art
Life is a magic vase filled to the brim; so made that you cannot dip into it nor draw from it; but it overflows into the hand that drops treasures into it – drop in malice and it overflows hate; drop in charity and it overflows love.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Life
The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don’t mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Humility
The anger of a person who is strong, can always bide its time.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Anger
Of all the pulpits from which the human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave.
—John Ruskin
The imagination is never governed, it is always the ruling and divine power.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Imagination, Power
I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Arts, Artists, Art
We may live without her, and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her. How cold is all history, how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears!
—John Ruskin
Topics: Architecture, Science
Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or he will certainly misunderstand them.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Authors & Writing, Brevity
Success by the laws of competition signifies a victory over others by obtaining the direction and profits of their work. This is the real source of all great riches.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Wealth, Victory, Success
Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know; it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Education
Do justice to your brother (you can do that, whether you love him or not), and you will come to love him. But do injustice to him because you don’t love him, and you will come to hate him.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Justice
The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as the greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Praise, Motivation
That happy sense of direct relation with Heaven is known evidently to multitudes of human souls of all faiths, and in all lands; evidently often a dream,—demonstrably, as I conceive, often a reality; in all cases dependent on resolution, patience, self-denial, prudence, obedience; of which some pure hearts are capable without effort, and some by constancy.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Heaven
People are eternally divided into two classes, the believer, builder, and praiser, and the unbeliever, destroyer and critic.
—John Ruskin
Topics: People
Of all the things that oppress me, this sense of the evil working of nature herself – my disgust at her barbarity – clumsiness – darkness – bitter mockery of herself – is the most desolating.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Evil, Nature
I know well that happiness is in little things.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Happiness
In the utmost solitudes of nature the existence of hell seems to me as legibly declared, by a thousand spiritual utterances, as that of heaven.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Hell
No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Architecture, Science
God gives us always strength enough, and sense enough, for everything He wants us to do.
—John Ruskin
Conceit may puff a man up, but can never prop him up.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Pride, Conceit
It is shallow criticism that would define poetry as confined to literary productions in rhyme and metre. The written poem is only poetry talking, and the statue, the picture, and the musical composition are poetry acting. Milton and Goethe, at their desks, were not more truly poets than Phidias with his chisel, Raphael at his easel, or deaf Beethoven bending over his piano, inventing and producing strains which he himself could never hope to hear.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Poetry
No peace was ever won from fate by subterfuge or agreement; no peace is ever in store for any of us, but that which we shall win by victory over shame or sin,—victory over the sin that oppresses, as well as over that which corrupts.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Peace
Mountains are to the rest of the body of the earth, what violent muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and tendons of its anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with force and convulsive energy, full of expression, passion, and strength.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Nature, Mountains
We treat God with irreverence by banishing him from our thoughts, not by referring to his will on slight occasions.
—John Ruskin
We have seen when the earth had to be prepared for the habitation of man, a veil, as it were, of intermediate being was spread between him and its darkness, in which were joined in a subdued measure, the stability and insensibility of the earth, and the passion and perishing of mankind.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Creation
To cultivate sympathy you must be among living beings and thinking about them; to cultivate admiration, among beautiful things and looking at them.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Admiration
When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, See! this our fathers did for us.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Architecture, Science
It is his restraint that is honorable to a person, not their liberty.
—John Ruskin
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- John Churton Collins British Literary Critic
- William Ernest Henley British Poet, Critic
- Jeremy Collier English Anglican Clergyman
- F. L. Lucas English Literary Critic
- Coventry Patmore English Writer
- George Lois American Advertising Executive
- Russell Lynes American Historian, Writer
- Bernard Berenson American Art Critic
- George Henry Lewes English Philosopher
- Bernard Mandeville British Writer
Leave a Reply