Top 450 John Ruskin Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Life is a magic vase filled to the brim, so made that you cannot dip from it nor draw from it; but it overflows into the hand that drops treasures into it. Drop in malice and it overflows hate; drop in charity and it overflows love.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

203. “Nature is always mysterious and secret in her use of means; and art is always likest her when it is most inexplicable.”

— John Ruskin

204. “That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.”

— John Ruskin

205. “See! This our fathers did for us.”

— John Ruskin

206. “The great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than the furnace blast, is all in very deed for this – that we manufacture everything there except men.”

— John Ruskin

207. “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

208. “Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

210. “Trust thou thy Love: if she be proud, is she not sweet? Trust thou thy love: if she be mute, is she not pure? Lay thou thy soul full in her hands, low at her feet- Fail, Sun and Breath!-yet, for thy peace, she shall endure.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

213. “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

214. “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

215. “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

216. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

219. “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

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. “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

222. “The last act crowns the play.”

— John Ruskin

223. “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

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

— John Ruskin

225. “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

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

— John Ruskin

227. “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

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

— John Ruskin

229. “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

230. “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

231. “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

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

— John Ruskin

233. “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

234. “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

235. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

238. “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

239. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

242. “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

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

— John Ruskin

244. “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

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

— John Ruskin

246. “Engraving then, is, in brief terms, the Art of Scratch.”

— John Ruskin

247. “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

248. “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

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

— John Ruskin

250. “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