Top 450 John Ruskin Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “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

152. “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

153. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

156. “All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

158. “There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration.”

— John Ruskin

159. “I fear uniformity. You cannot manufacture great men any more than you can manufacture gold.”

— John Ruskin

160. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

164. “It is advisable that a person know at least three things, where they are, where they are going, and what they had best do under the circumstances.”

— John Ruskin

165. “The force of the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbour’s pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you.”

— John Ruskin

166. “You will find it less easy to unroot faults than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do not think of your faults, still less of others faults; in every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong; honor that; rejoice in it and as you can, try to imitate it; and your faults will drop off like dead leaves when their time comes.”

— John Ruskin

167. “What is the cheapest to you now is likely to be the dearest to you in the end.”

— John Ruskin

168. “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

169. “It is his restraint that is honorable to a person, not their liberty.”

— John Ruskin

170. “Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.”

— John Ruskin

171. “To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.”

— John Ruskin

172. “No peace was ever won from fate by subterfuge or argument; 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

173. “Greatness is the aggregation of minuteness; nor can its sublimity be felt truthfully by any mind unaccustomed to the affectionate watching of what is least.”

— John Ruskin

174. “An unimaginative person can neither be reverent nor kind.”

— John Ruskin

175. “Levi’s station in life was the receipt of custom; and Peter’s, the shore of Galilee; and Paul’s, the antechambers of the High- Priest, which “station in life” each had to leave, with brief notice.”

— John Ruskin

176. “Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light.”

— John Ruskin

177. “Hope- the recognition, by true foresight, of better things to be reached here after.”

— John Ruskin

178. “Society has sacrificed its virtues to the Goddess of Getting Along.”

— John Ruskin

179. “Spiritual power begins by directing animal power to other than egoistic ends.”

— John Ruskin

180. “Repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite, – energy.”

— John Ruskin

181. “If you do not wish for His kingdom do not pray for it. But if you do you must do more than pray for it, you must work for it.”

— John Ruskin

182. “I want to speak to you about the treasures hidden in books; and about the way we find them, and the way we lose them.”

— John Ruskin

183. “Whenever you see want or misery or degradation in this world about you, then be sure either industry has been wanting, or industry has been in error.”

— John Ruskin

184. “All other passions do occasional good; but when pride puts in its word everything goes wrong.”

— John Ruskin

185. “It is far better to give work that is above a person, than to educate the person to be above their work.”

— John Ruskin

186. “Pleasure comes through toil, and not by self indulgence and indolence. When one gets to love work, his life is a happy one.”

— John Ruskin

187. “That admiration of the ‘neat but not gaudy,’ which is commonly reported to have influenced the devil when he painted his tail pea green.”

— John Ruskin

188. “Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.”

— John Ruskin

189. “Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.”

— John Ruskin

190. “If you want knowledge, you must toil for it; if food, you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it: toil is the law.”

— John Ruskin

191. “Ornamentation is the principal part of architecture, considered as a subject of fine art.”

— John Ruskin

192. “It is a good and safe rule to sojourn in every place as if you meant to spend your life there, never omitting an opportunity of doing a kindness, or speaking a true word, or making a friend.”

— John Ruskin

193. “To yield reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at his disposal, is not slavery; often, it is the noblest state in which a man can live in this world.”

— John Ruskin

194. “All great art is the expression of man’s delight in God’s work, not his own.”

— John Ruskin

195. “No one can do me any good by loving me; I have more love than I need or could do any good with; but people do me good by making me love them – which isn’t easy.”

— John Ruskin

196. “I do not believe that any peacock envies another peacock his tail, because every peacock is persuaded that his own tail is the finest in the world. The consequence of this is that peacocks are peaceable birds.”

— John Ruskin

197. “There is a working class – strong and happy – among both rich and poor: there is an idle class – weak, wicked, and miserable – among both rich and poor.”

— John Ruskin

198. “It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.”

— John Ruskin

199. “Our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves what shall be true for the future.”

— John Ruskin

200. “Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer.”

— John Ruskin