Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by John Ruskin (English Art Critic)

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

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

Genius is only a superior power of seeing.
John Ruskin
Topics: Power, Genius

Along the iron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the fiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every hour. All vitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the central cities; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds on the city gates.
John Ruskin

It does not matter what the whip is; it is none the less a whip, because you have cut thongs for it out of your own souls.
John Ruskin
Topics: Slavery

An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.
John Ruskin
Topics: Science, Architecture

You will find it less easy to uproot faults, than to choke them by gaining virtues.
John Ruskin
Topics: Faults

People cannot live by lending money to one another.
John Ruskin

The best thing in life aren’t things.
John Ruskin
Topics: Value

No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side; no leaf is perfect in its lobes, and no branch in its symmetry.—All admit irregularity, as they imply change.—To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.—All things are 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 may be mercy.
John Ruskin
Topics: Perfectionism

It is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have… insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, can never be recalled.
John Ruskin

Nearly all the powerful people of this age are unbelievers, the best of them in doubt and misery, the most in plodding hesitation, doing as well as they can, what practical work lies at hand.
John Ruskin
Topics: Doubt, Skepticism

Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.
John Ruskin
Topics: Slavery

The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.
John Ruskin
Topics: Desire, Education

I desire … to leave this one great fact clearly stated. THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE.
John Ruskin
Topics: Wealth

Consider what heavy responsibility lies upon you in your youth, to determine, among realities, by what you will be delighted, and, among imaginations, by whose you will be led.
John Ruskin
Topics: Youth

The distinctive character of a child is to always live in the tangible present.
John Ruskin
Topics: Children

The art of nations is cumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding but building itself on the work of the past.
John Ruskin
Topics: Progress

Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.
John Ruskin
Topics: Talent

One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.
John Ruskin
Topics: Death

We were not sent into this world to do anything into which we can not put our heart.
John Ruskin
Topics: Purpose, Meaning

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

There is a care for trifles which proceeds from love and conscience, and which is most holy; and there is a care for trifles which comes of idleness and frivolity, and is most base.—And so, also, there is a gravity proceeding from thought, which is most noble, and a gravity proceeding from dullness and mere incapability for enjoyment, which is most base.
John Ruskin
Topics: Trifles

A book worth reading is worth buying.
John Ruskin
Topics: Literature, Reading, Books

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

When I have been unhappy, I have heard an opera … and it seemed the shrieking of winds; when I am happy, a sparrow’s chirp is delicious to me. But it is not the chirp that makes me happy, but I that make it sweet.
John Ruskin
Topics: Self-reliance, Confidence, Happiness

God has lent us the earth for our life; it is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come after us, and whose names are already written in the book of creation, as to us; and we have no right, by anything that we do or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits which it was in our power to bequeath.
John Ruskin

The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.
John Ruskin
Topics: Vanity

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 nothing to give pension and cottage
to the widow who has lost her son;
it is nothing to give food and medicine to the workman
who has broken his arm, or the decrepit woman wasting in sickness.
But it is something to use your time and strength to war
with the waywardness and thoughtlessness of mankind;
to keep the erring workman in your service till you
have made him an unerring one, and to direct your
fellow-merchant to the opportunity which
his judgment would have lost.
John Ruskin
Topics: Action

Education is the leading human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them; and these two objects are always attainable together, and by the same means; the training which makes men happiest in themselves also makes them most serviceable to others.
John Ruskin
Topics: Education

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