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
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
There is rough work to be done, and rough men must do it; there is gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do it.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Work
We were not sent into this world to do anything into which we can not put our heart.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Purpose, Meaning
He is only advancing in life, whose heart is getting softer, his blood warmer, his brain quicker, and his spirit entering into living peace.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Progress
Cunning signifies, especially, a habit or gift of overreaching, accompanied with enjoyment and a sense of superiority.—It is associated with small and dull conceit, and with an absolute want of sympathy or affection.—It is the intensest rendering of vulgarity, absolute and utter.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Cunning
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, Happiness, Confidence
Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Flowers
No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Ability
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
The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Vanity
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
Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others, but of the three the only trustworthy one is the last.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Nationality, Nation, Nations, Nationalism
No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Art
The best work never was and never will be done for money.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Work
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
Now the basest thought possible concerning man is, that he has no spiritual nature; and the foolish misunderstanding of him possible is, that he has, or should have, no animal nature. For his nature is nobly animal, nobly spiritual,—coherently and irrevocably so; neither part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy the other.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Man
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
Children see in their parents the past, their parents see in them the future; and if we find more love in the parents for their children than in children for their parents, this is sad but natural. Who does not entertain his hopes more than his recollections.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Children
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
Civilization is the making of civil persons.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Civilization
Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Talent
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
Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Enjoyment
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
Topics: Science, Technology
You can talk a mob into anything; its feelings may be—usually are—on the whole generous and right: but it has no foundation for them, no hold of them; you may tease or tickle it into any, at your pleasure; it thinks by infection, for the most part, catching a passion like a cold, and there is nothing so little that it will not roar itself wild about, when the fit is on; nothing so great but it will forget it in an hour, when the fit is past. But a gentleman’s, or a gentle nation’s passions are just, measured, and continuous.
—John Ruskin
We treat God with irreverence by banishing him from our thoughts, not by referring to his will on slight occasions.
—John Ruskin
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
There is no wealth but life.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Life, Blessings
Why is one man richer than another? Because he is more industrious, more persevering and more sagacious.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Wealth
It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Money
Consider whether we ought not to be more in the habit of seeking honor from our descendants than from our ancestors; thinking it better to be nobly remembered than nobly born; and striving so to live, that our sons, and our sons’ sons, for ages to come, might still lead their children reverently to the doors out of which we had been carried to the grave, saying, “Look, this was his house, this was his chamber.”
—John Ruskin
Topics: Ancestry
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
The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Nationality, Nation, Nationalism, Nations
Make yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts. None of us knows what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful thought-proof against all adversity. Bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble histories, faithful sayings, treasure houses of precious and restful thoughts, which care cannot disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty take away from us.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Thought
The anger of a person who is strong, can always bide its time.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Anger
No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Perfection
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
The best thing in life aren’t things.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Value
Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Literature, Books, Reading
Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.
—John Ruskin
Topics: Disorder, Music
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