Top 450 John Ruskin Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “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

402. “Your labor only may be sold, your soul must not.”

— John Ruskin

403. “God never imposes a duty without giving time to do it.”

— John Ruskin

404. “We may, without offending any laws of good taste, require of an architect, as we do of a novelist, that he should be not only correct, but entertaining.”

— John Ruskin

405. “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

406. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

410. “I do not believe that ever any building was truly great, unless it had mighty masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow mingled with its surface.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

413. “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

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

— John Ruskin

415. “I libri si dividono in due categorie: i libri per adesso e i libri per sempre.”

— John Ruskin

416. “The secret of language is the secret of sympathy, and its full charm is possible only to the gentle.”

— John Ruskin

417. “There is no action so slight or so mean but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled thereby.”

— John Ruskin

418. “It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.”

— John Ruskin

419. “Nothing can be true which is either complete or vacant; every touch is false which does not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which represents nothing.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

422. “The man who says to one, go, and he goeth, and to another, come, and he cometh, has, in most cases, more sense of restraint and difficulty than the man who obeys him.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

424. “Of all the things that oppress me, this sense of the evil working of nature herself -my disgust at her barbarity -clumsiness -darkness -bitter mockery of herself -is the most desolating.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

427. “There are no laws by which we can write Iliads.”

— John Ruskin

428. “Once thoroughly our own knowledge ceases to give us pleasure.”

— John Ruskin

429. “Borrowers are nearly always ill-spenders, and it is with lent money that all evil is mainly done and all unjust war protracted.”

— John Ruskin

430. “If a great thing can be done, it can be done easily, but this ease is like the of ease of a tree blossoming after long years of gathering strength.”

— John Ruskin

431. “To follow art for the sake of being a great man, and therefore to cast about continually for some means of achieving position or attracting admiration, is the surest way of ending in total extinction.”

— John Ruskin

432. “That man is always happy who is in the presence of something which he cannot know to the full, which he is always going on to know.”

— John Ruskin

433. “All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.”

— John Ruskin

434. “Better a child should be ignorant of a thousand truths than have consecrated in its heart a single lie.”

— John Ruskin

435. “The only absolutely and unapproachably heroic element in the soldier’s work seems to be-that he is paid little for it-and regularly.”

— John Ruskin

436. “All really great pictures exhibit the general habits of nature, manifested in some peculiar, rare, and beautiful way.”

— John Ruskin

437. “See that your children be taught, not only the labors of the earth, but the loveliness of it.”

— John Ruskin

438. “People are always expecting to get peace in heaven: but you know whatever peace they get there will be ready-made. Whatever making of peace they can be blest for, must be on the earth here.”

— John Ruskin

439. “The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.”

— John Ruskin

440. “At every moment of our lives we should be trying to find out, not in what we differ with other people, but in what we agree with them.”

— John Ruskin

441. “That which is required in order to the attainment of accurate conclusions respecting the essence of the Beautiful is nothing morethan earnest, loving, and unselfish attention to our impressions of it.”

— John Ruskin

442. “Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect in its own bad way.”

— John Ruskin

443. “All great song, from the first day when human lips contrived syllables, has been sincere song.”

— John Ruskin

444. “No one can ask honestly or hopefully to be delivered from temptation unless he has himself honestly and firmly determined to do the best he can to keep out of it.”

— John Ruskin

445. “The persons who become rich are, generally speaking, industrious, resolute, proud, covetous, prompt, methodical, sensible, unimaginative, insensitive, and ignorant. The persons who remain poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the idle, the reckless, the humble, the thoughtful, the dull, the imaginative, the sensitive, the well-informed, the improvident, the irregularly and impulsively wicked, the clumsy knave, the open thief, and the entirely merciful just and godly person.”

— John Ruskin

446. “Never has interest in art been so high, and never has quality been so low.”

— John Ruskin

447. “Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor.”

— John Ruskin

448. “Nearly all the powerful people of this age are unbelievers, the best of them in doubt and misery, the most in plodding hesitation, doing as well as they can, what practical work lies at hand.”

— John Ruskin

449. “The true work of a critic is not to make his hearer believe him, but agree with him.”

— John Ruskin

450. “Always stand by form against force.”

— John Ruskin