Top 450 John Ruskin Quotes (2023 Update)
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101. “Science lives only in quiet places, and with odd people, mostly poor.”

— John Ruskin

102. “This is the true nature of home – it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division.”

— John Ruskin

103. “All that is good in art is the expression of one soul talking to another, and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it.”

— John Ruskin

104. “Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity.”

— John Ruskin

105. “If some people really see angels where others see only empty space, let them paint the angels: only let not anybody else think they can paint an angel too, on any calculated principles of the angelic.”

— John Ruskin

106. “Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.”

— John Ruskin

107. “Of all God’s gifts to the sighted man, color is holiest, the most divine, the most solemn.”

— John Ruskin

108. “He who has truth at his heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue.”

— John Ruskin

109. “The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers; but they rise behind her steps, not before them.”

— John Ruskin

110. “Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.”

— John Ruskin

111. “What is poetry? The suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions.”

— John Ruskin

112. “The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.”

— John Ruskin

113. “He only is advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into living peace. And the men who have this life in them are the true lords or kings of the earth they, and they only.”

— John Ruskin

114. “All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.”

— John Ruskin

115. “The history of humanity is not the history of its wars, but the history of its households.”

— John Ruskin

116. “Do not think of your faults, still less of other’s faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.”

— John Ruskin

117. “Not without design does God write the music of our lives.”

— John Ruskin

118. “In all things that live there are certain irregularities, and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry.”

— John Ruskin

119. “To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.”

— John Ruskin

120. “A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.”

— John Ruskin

121. “Give me some mud off a city crossing, some ochre out of a gravel pit and a little whitening and some coal dust and I will paint you a luminous picture if you give me time to gradate my mud and subdue my dust.”

— John Ruskin

122. “Ship of the line is the most honourable thing that man, as a gregarious animal, has ever produced.”

— John Ruskin

123. “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

124. “No human being, however great, or powerful, was ever so free as a fish.”

— John Ruskin

125. “Come, ye cold winds, at January’s call, On whistling wings, and with white flakes bestrew The earth.”

— John Ruskin

126. “On the whole, it is patience which makes the final difference between those who succeed or fail in all things. All the greatest people have it in an infinite degree, and among the less, the patient weak ones always conquer the impatient strong.”

— John Ruskin

127. “The noble grotesque involves the true appreciation of beauty.”

— John Ruskin

128. “That which seems to be wealth may in verity be only the gilded index of far reaching ruin.”

— John Ruskin

129. “No small misery is caused by overworked and unhappy people, in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of work itself.”

— John Ruskin

130. “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.”

— John Ruskin

131. “He thinks by infection, catching an opinion like a cold.”

— John Ruskin

132. “To watch the corn grow, or the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over the plough or spade; to read, to think, to love, to pray are the things that make men happy.”

— John Ruskin

133. “Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.”

— John Ruskin

134. “God alone can finish.”

— John Ruskin

135. “All things are literally 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, mercy.”

— John Ruskin

136. “An infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of all truly great men.”

— John Ruskin

137. “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

138. “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.”

— John Ruskin

139. “You were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased with them, or too grasping to care for what you can not turn to other account than mere delight.”

— John Ruskin

140. “Do not think it wasted time to submit yourself to any influence that will bring upon you any noble feeling.”

— John Ruskin

141. “Without the perfect sympathy with the animals around them, no gentleman’s education, no Christian education, could be of any possible use.”

— John Ruskin

142. “They are good furniture pictures, unworthy of praise, and undeserving of blame.”

— John Ruskin

143. “No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.”

— John Ruskin

144. “You can only possess beauty through understanding it.”

— John Ruskin

145. “Of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, scrannel- pipiest, tongs and boniest doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliest of, that eternityof nothing wasthe deadliest.”

— John Ruskin

146. “Reading and writing are not education if they do not help people to be kind to all creatures.”

— John Ruskin

147. “The anger of a person who is strong, can always bide its time.”

— John Ruskin

148. “Without mountains the air could not be purified, nor the flowing of the rivers sustained.”

— John Ruskin

149. “Whether for life or death, do your own work well.”

— John Ruskin

150. “The constant duty of every man to his fellows is to ascertain his own powers and special gifts, and to strengthen them for the help of others.”

— John Ruskin