John Ruskin Quotes
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Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
[Forgiveness]
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Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are.
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Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are.
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That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.
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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.
[Heaven]
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The architecture of a nation is great only when it is as universal and established as its language, and when provinncial differences are nothing more than so many dialects.
[Architecture]
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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.
[Progress]
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The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.
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The beauty of the animal form is in exact proportion to the amount of moral and intellectual virtue expressed by it.
[Beauty]
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The blind and cowardly spirit of evil is forever telling you that evil things are pardonable, and you shall not die for them; and that good things are impossible, and you need not live for them. And, if you believe these things, you will find some day, to your cost, that they are untrue.
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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.
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The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.
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The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it.
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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.
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The entire vitality of art depends upon its being either full of truth, or full of use; and that, however pleasant, wonderful, or impressive it may be in itself, it must yet be of inferior kind, and tend to deeper inferiority, unless it has clearly one of these main objects, - either to state a true thing, or to adorn a serviceable one.
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The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.
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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.
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The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work.
[Able]
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The first duty of a state is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed and educated till it attains years of discretion.
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The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.
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