Top 450 John Ruskin Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “No picture can be good which deceives by its imitation, for the very reason that nothing can be beautiful which is not true.”

— John Ruskin

302. “Imperfections have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be effort, and the law of human judgment mercy.”

— John Ruskin

303. “To speak and act truth with constancy and precision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps as meretorious, as to speak it under intimidation or penalty.”

— John Ruskin

304. “The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.”

— John Ruskin

305. “Absolute and entire ugliness is rare.”

— John Ruskin

306. “It is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, can never be recalled.”

— John Ruskin

307. “He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.”

— John Ruskin

308. “There is nothing so small but that we may honor God by asking His guidance of it, or insult Him by taking it into our own hands.”

— John Ruskin

309. “English artists are usually entirely ruined by residence in Italy.”

— John Ruskin

310. “No lying knight or lying priest ever prospered in any age, but especially not in the dark ones. Men prospered then only in following an openly declared purpose, and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds.”

— John Ruskin

311. “When the whole world turns clown, and paints itself red with its own hearts blood instead of vermilion, it is something else than comic.”

— John Ruskin

312. “But whether thus submissively or not, at least be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.”

— John Ruskin

313. “An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.”

— John Ruskin

314. “Wherever men are noble, they love bright colour; and wherever they can live healthily, bright colour is given them – in sky, sea, flowers, and living creatures.”

— John Ruskin

315. “Milton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak.”

— John Ruskin

316. “Science has to do with facts, art with phenomena. To science, phenomena are of use only as they lead to facts; and to art, facts are of use only as they lead to phenomena.”

— John Ruskin

317. “Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.”

— John Ruskin

318. “Every hue throughout your work is altered by every touch you add in other places.”

— John Ruskin

319. “However good you may be you have faults; however dull you may be you can find out what some of them are, and however slight they may be you had better make some – not too painful, but patient efforts to get rid of them.”

— John Ruskin

320. “The best work never was and never will be done for money.”

— John Ruskin

321. “There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest numbers of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest, who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.”

— John Ruskin

322. “Our purity of taste is best tested by its universality, for if we can only admire this thing or that, we maybe use that our cause for liking is of a finite and false nature.”

— John Ruskin

323. “Unless we perform divine service with every willing act of our life, we never perform it at all.”

— John Ruskin

324. “There is nothing so great or so goodly in creation, but that it is a mean symbol of the gospel of Christ, and of the things He has prepared for them that love Him.”

— John Ruskin

325. “Variety is a positive requisite even in the character of our food.”

— John Ruskin

326. “All men who have sense and feeling are being continually helped; they are taught by every person they meet, and enriched by everything that falls in their way. The greatest, is he who has been oftenest aided. Originality is the observing eye.”

— John Ruskin

327. “Whenever I did anything wrong, stupid or hard-hearted, and I have done many things that were all three, my mother always said “it is because you were too much indulged.””

— John Ruskin

328. “The imagination is never governed, it is always the ruling and divine power.”

— John Ruskin

329. “The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as the greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.”

— John Ruskin

330. “I cannot but think it an evil sign of a people when their houses are built to last for one generation only.”

— John Ruskin

331. “Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities.”

— John Ruskin

332. “An artist should be well read in the best books, and thoroughly high bred, both in heart and bearing. In a word, he should be fit for the best society, and should keef out of it.”

— John Ruskin

333. “Men don’t and can’t live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don’t live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of laborers Unions.”

— John Ruskin

334. “The wisest men are wise to the full in death.”

— John Ruskin

335. “Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.”

— John Ruskin

336. “How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?”

— John Ruskin

337. “It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.”

— John Ruskin

338. “Human work must be done honourably and thoroughly, because we are now Men; whether we ever expect to be angels, or were ever slugs, being practically no matter.”

— John Ruskin

339. “In great countries, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents want to make them into adults. In vile countries, the children are always wanting to be adults and the parents want to keep them children.”

— John Ruskin

340. “No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.”

— John Ruskin

341. “As long as there are cold and nakedness in the land around you, so long can there be no question at all but that splendor of dress is a crime.”

— John Ruskin

342. “Absolute ugliness is admitted as rarely as perfect beauty; but degrees of it more or less distinct are associated with whatever has the nature of death and sin, just as beauty is associated with what has the nature of virtue and of life.”

— John Ruskin

343. “Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth.”

— John Ruskin

344. “No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.”

— John Ruskin

345. “No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.”

— John Ruskin

346. “And besides; the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one; distribute the earth as you will, the principal question remains inexorable, Who is to dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay?”

— John Ruskin

347. “Men are more evanescent than pictures, yet one sorrows for lost friends, and pictures are my friends. I have none others. I am never long enough with men to attach myself to them; and whatever feelings of attachment I have are to material things.”

— John Ruskin

348. “To cultivate sympathy you must be among living creatures, and thinking about them; and to cultivate admiration, you must be among beautiful things and looking at them.”

— John Ruskin

349. “The Divine mind is as visible in its full energy of operation on every lowly bank and mouldering stone as in the lifting of the pillars of heaven, and settling the foundation of the earth.”

— John Ruskin

350. “The beginning and almost the end of all good law is that everyone shall work for their bread and receive good bread for their work.”

— John Ruskin