Top 450 John Ruskin Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.”

— John Ruskin

202. “There was always more in the world than men could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace.”

— John Ruskin

203. “There is no solemnity so deep, to a right-thinking creature, as that of dawn.”

— John Ruskin

204. “A book is written, not to multiply the voice merely, not to carry it merely, but to preserve it. The author has something to say which he perceives to be true and useful, or beautifully helpful.”

— John Ruskin

205. “Value is the life-giving power of anything; cost, the quantity of labour required to produce it; its price, the quantity of labourwhich its possessor will take in exchange for it.”

— John Ruskin

206. “Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.”

— John Ruskin

207. “No one can explain how the notes of a Mozart melody, or the folds of a piece of Titian’s drapery, produce their essential effects. If you do not feel it, no one can by reasoning make you feel it.”

— John Ruskin

208. “Freedom is only granted us that obedience may be more perfect.”

— John Ruskin

209. “Contrast increases the splendor of beauty, but it disturbs its influence; it adds to its attractiveness, but diminishes its power.”

— John Ruskin

210. “The sky is the part of creation in which nature has done for the sake of pleasing man.”

— John Ruskin

211. “Your art is to be the praise of something that you love. It may only be the praise of a shell or a stone.”

— John Ruskin

212. “As in the instances of alchemy, astrology, witchcraft, and other such popular creeds, political economy, has a plausible idea at the root of it.”

— John Ruskin

213. “If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses.”

— John Ruskin

214. “It is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity.”

— John Ruskin

215. “In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong.”

— John Ruskin

216. “Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.”

— John Ruskin

217. “In one point of view, Gothic is not only the best, but the only rational architecture, as being that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble.”

— John Ruskin

218. “The last act crowns the play.”

— John Ruskin

219. “It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.”

— John Ruskin

220. “Everything that you can see in the world around you presents itself to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colors.”

— John Ruskin

221. “We may live without her, and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her. How cold is all history, how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears!”

— John Ruskin

222. “Morality does not depend on religion.”

— John Ruskin

223. “Sculpture is not the mere cutting of the form of anything in stone; it is the cutting of the effect of it. Very often the true form, in the marble, would not be in the least like itself.”

— John Ruskin

224. “The object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy them.”

— John Ruskin

225. “A forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable, in effect; a mass of one species of tree is sublime.”

— John Ruskin

226. “It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately.”

— John Ruskin

227. “Anything which elevates the mind is sublime. Greatness of matter, space, power, virtue or beauty, are all sublime.”

— John Ruskin

228. “You will never love art well until you love what she mirrors better.”

— John Ruskin

229. “Shadows are in reality, when the sun is shining, the most conspicuous thing in a landscape, next to the highest lights.”

— John Ruskin

230. “Success by the laws of competition signifies a victory over others by obtaining the direction and profits of their work. This is the real source of all great riches.”

— John Ruskin

231. “There is in every animal’s eye a dim image and gleam of humanity, a flash of strange light through which their life looks out and up to our great mystery of command over them, and claims the fellowship of the creature if not of the soul.”

— John Ruskin

232. “I am far more provoked at being thought foolish by foolish people, than pleased at being thought sensible by sensible people; and the average proportion of the numbers of each is not to my advantage.”

— John Ruskin

233. “He who is not actively kind is cruel!”

— John Ruskin

234. “I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this; was it done with enjoyment, was the carver happy while he was about it?”

— John Ruskin

235. “Great men do not play stage tricks with the doctrines of life and death: only little men do that.”

— John Ruskin

236. “Labor rids us of three great evils; tediousness, vice, and poverty.”

— John Ruskin

237. “Science is the knowledge of constant things, not merely of passing events, and is properly less the knowledge of general laws than of existing facts.”

— John Ruskin

238. “A man is born an artist as a hippopotamus is born a hippopotamus; and you can no more make yourself one than you can make yourself a giraffe.”

— John Ruskin

239. “The true grotesque being the expression of the repose or play of a serious mind, there is a false grotesque opposed to it, which is the result of the full exertion of a frivolous one.”

— John Ruskin

240. “Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know in life.”

— John Ruskin

241. “Cheerfulness is as natural to the heart of a man in strong health as color to his cheek; and wherever there is habitual gloom there must be either bad air, unwholesome food, improperly severe labor, or erring habits of life.”

— John Ruskin

242. “In order that a man may be happy, it is necessary that he should not only be capable of his work, but a good judge of his work.”

— John Ruskin

243. “It is not possible to find a landscape, which if painted precisely as it is, will not make an impressive picture. No one knows, till he has tried, what strange beauty and subtle composition is prepared to his hand by Nature.”

— John Ruskin

244. “There is material enough in a single flower for the ornament of a score of cathedrals.”

— John Ruskin

245. “A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.”

— John Ruskin

246. “Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.”

— John Ruskin

247. “Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.”

— John Ruskin

248. “Bread of flour is good; but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book.”

— John Ruskin

249. “It is better to be nobly remembered than nobly born.”

— John Ruskin

250. “The highest thoughts are those which are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any composition and praise to which it is entitled are in exact proportion to its dependency of language or expression.”

— John Ruskin