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

352. “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

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

— John Ruskin

354. “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

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

— John Ruskin

356. “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

357. “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

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

— John Ruskin

360. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

363. “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

364. “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

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

— John Ruskin

366. “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

367. “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

368. “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

369. “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

370. “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

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

— John Ruskin

372. “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

373. “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

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

— John Ruskin

375. “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

376. “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

377. “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

378. “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

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

— John Ruskin

380. “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

381. “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

382. “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

383. “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

384. “For certainly it is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them.”

— John Ruskin

385. “The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.”

— John Ruskin

386. “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

387. “In the range of inorganic nature. I doubt if any object can be found more perfectly beautiful than a fresh, deep snowdrift, seen under warm light.”

— John Ruskin

388. “People cannot live by lending money to one another.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

392. “A splendour of miscellaneous spirits.”

— John Ruskin

393. “In painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter your manner.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

395. “One of the prevailing sources of misery and crime is in the generally accepted assumption, that because things have been wrong a long time, it is impossible they will ever be right.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

397. “Nothing is ever done beautifully which is done in rivalship: or nobly, which is done in pride.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

399. “Why is one man richer than another? Because he is more industrious, more persevering and more sagacious.”

— John Ruskin

400. “Greater completion marks the progress of art, absolute completion usually its decline.”

— John Ruskin