Top 450 John Ruskin Quotes (2023 Update)
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301. “Race is precisely of as much consequence in man as it is in any animal.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

304. “Work first and then rest. Work first, and then gaze, but do not use golden ploughshares, nor bind ledgers in enamel.”

— John Ruskin

305. “Absolute and entire ugliness is rare.”

— John Ruskin

306. “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

307. “There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

309. “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

310. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

317. “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

318. “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

319. “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

320. “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

321. “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

322. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

325. “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

326. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

329. “If the design of the building be originally bad, the only virtue it can ever possess will be signs of antiquity.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

331. “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

332. “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

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

— John Ruskin

334. “It is not the church we want, but the sacrifice; not the emotion of admiration, but the act of adoration; not the gift, but the giving.”

— John Ruskin

335. “Science studies the relations of things to each other: but art studies only their relations to man.”

— John Ruskin

336. “A nation which lives a pastoral and innocent life never decorates the shepherd’s staff or the plough-handle; but races who live by depredation and slaughter nearly always bestow exquisite ornaments on the quiver, the helmet, and the spear.”

— John Ruskin

337. “How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

339. “In old times men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith, in later times they use the objects of faith to show their powers of painting.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

341. “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

342. “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

343. “The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.”

— John Ruskin

344. “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

345. “Great art is precisely that which never was, nor will be taught, it is preeminently and finally the expression of the spirits of great men.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

347. “Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen from bishops desiring power more than light. They want authority, not outlook.”

— John Ruskin

348. “As the art of life is learned, it will be found at last that all lovely things are also necessary; a wild flower by the wayside, tended corn, wild birds and creatures of the forest, as well as the tended cattle; because man doth not live by bread only.”

— John Ruskin

349. “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

350. “Men cannot not live by exchanging articles, but producing them. They live by work not trade.”

— John Ruskin