Top 450 John Ruskin Quotes (2023 Update)
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351. “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

352. “All true opinions are living, and show their life by being capable of nourishment; therefore of change. But their change is that of a tree not of a cloud.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

354. “I am almost sick and giddy with the quantity of things in my head, all tempting and wanting to be worked out.”

— John Ruskin

355. “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

356. “Taste is not only a part and index of morality, it is the only morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is “What do you like?” Tell me what you like, I’ll tell you what you are.”

— John Ruskin

357. “The relative majesty of buildings depends more on the weight and vigour of their masses than any other tribute of their design.”

— John Ruskin

358. “What right have you to take the word wealth, which originally meant well-being, and degrade and narrow it by confining it to certain sorts of material objects measured by money.”

— John Ruskin

359. “In the utmost solitudes of nature, the existence of hell seems to me as legibly declared by a thousand spiritual utterances as that of heaven.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

362. “Of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave.”

— John Ruskin

363. “Order and system are nobler things than power.”

— John Ruskin

364. “There is no harm in anybody thinking that Christ is in bread. The harm is in the expectation of His presence in gunpowder.”

— John Ruskin

365. “You may sell your work, but not your soul.”

— John Ruskin

366. “Disorder in a drawing-room is vulgar; in an antiquary’s study, not; the black battle-stain on a soldier’s face is not vulgar, but the dirty face of a housemaid is.”

— John Ruskin

367. “The only way to understand the difficult parts of the Bible is first to read and obey the easy ones.”

— John Ruskin

368. “It does not matter what the whip is; it is none the less a whip, because you have cut thongs for it out of your own souls.”

— John Ruskin

369. “What is really desired, under the name of riches, is, essentially, power over men; in its simplest sense, the power of obtaining for own own advantage the labour of servant, tradesman, and artist; in wider sense, authority of directing large masses of the nation to various ends.”

— John Ruskin

370. “Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves.”

— John Ruskin

371. “It is a wiser, more generous, more noble thing to remember and point out the perfect words, than to invent poorer ones, wherewith to encumber temporarily the world.”

— John Ruskin

372. “Wise laws and just restraints are to a noble nation not chains, but chains of mail, – strength and defense, though something of an incumbrance.”

— John Ruskin

373. “Whatever merit there is in anything that I have written is simply due to the fact that when I was a child my mother daily read me a part of the Bible and daily made me learn a part of it by heart.”

— John Ruskin

374. “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

375. “Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.”

— John Ruskin

376. “The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men’s lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.”

— John Ruskin

377. “Now observe; if the artist does not understand the sacredness of the truth of Impression, and supposes that, once quitting hold of his first thought, he may by Philosophy compose something prettier than he saw and mightier than he felt, it is all over with him. Every such attempt at composition will be utterly abortive, and end in something that is neither true nor fanciful; something geographically useless, and intellectually absurd.”

— John Ruskin

378. “Obey something, and you will have a chance to learn what is best to obey. But if you begin by obeying nothing, you will end by obeying the devil and all his invited friends.”

— John Ruskin

379. “You cannot get anything out of nature or from God by gambling; only out of your neighbor.”

— John Ruskin

380. “Other men used their effete faiths and mean faculties with a high moral purpose. The Venetian gave the most earnest faith, and the lordliest faculty, to gild the shadows of an antechamber, or heighten the splendours of a holiday.”

— John Ruskin

381. “When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work.”

— John Ruskin

382. “If the thing is impossible, you need not trouble yourselves about it; if possible, try for it.”

— John Ruskin

383. “I’ve seen the Rhine with younger wave, O’er every obstacle to rave. I see the Rhine in his native wild Is still a mighty mountain child.”

— John Ruskin

384. “You may assuredly find perfect peace, if you are resolved to do that which your Lord has plainly required – and content that He should indeed require no more of you – than to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with Him.”

— John Ruskin

385. “You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.”

— John Ruskin

386. “Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.”

— John Ruskin

387. “What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?”

— John Ruskin

388. “To give alms is nothing unless you give thought also.”

— John Ruskin

389. “It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all that he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his readers is sure to skip them.”

— John Ruskin

390. “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

391. “The time is probably near when a new system of architectural laws will be developed, adapted entirely to metallic construction.”

— John Ruskin

392. “Cursing is invoking the assistance of a spirit to help you inflict suffering. Swearing on the other hand, is invoking, only the witness of a spirit to an statement you wish to make.”

— John Ruskin

393. “Butforme, theAlps and their peoplewerealikebeautiful in their snow, and their humanity; and I wanted, neither for them nor myself, sight of any thrones in heaven but the rocks, or of any spirits in heaven but the clouds.”

— John Ruskin

394. “There is no process of amalgamation by which opinions, wrong individually, can become right merely by their multitude.”

— John Ruskin

395. “It is a matter of the simplest demonstration, that no man can be really appreciated but by his equal or superior.”

— John Ruskin

396. “Architecture concerns itself only with those characters of an edifice which are above and beyond its common use.”

— John Ruskin

397. “Greatness is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but the expression of the mind of a God-made great man.”

— John Ruskin

398. “A splendour of miscellaneous spirits.”

— John Ruskin

399. “To be taught to read – what is the use of that, if you know not whether what you read is false or true? To be taught to write or to speak – but what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think – nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, and both true.”

— John Ruskin

400. “It takes a great deal of living to get a little deal of learning.”

— John Ruskin