Top 450 John Ruskin Quotes (2023 Update)
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401. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

404. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

409. “No amount of pay ever made a good soldier, a good teacher, a good artist, or a good workman.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

412. “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

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

— John Ruskin

414. “Childhood often holds a truth with its feeble finger, which the grasp of manhood cannot retain, – which it is the pride of utmost age to recover.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

421. “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

422. “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

423. “Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to oar moral nature in its purity and perfection.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

425. “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

426. “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

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

— John Ruskin

428. “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

429. “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

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

— John Ruskin

431. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

436. “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

437. “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

438. “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

439. “No divine terror will ever be found in the work of the man who wastes a colossal strength in elaborating toys; for the first lesson that terror is sent to teach us is, the value of the human soul, and the shortness of mortal time.”

— John Ruskin

440. “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

441. “It is far better to give work that is above a person, than to educate the person to be above their work.”

— John Ruskin

442. “Surely our clergy need not be surprised at the daily increasing distrust in the public mind of the efficacy of prayer.”

— John Ruskin

443. “There is a satisfactory and available power in every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all persons have the power of learning French, Latin or arithmetic, in a decent and useful degree.”

— John Ruskin

444. “Always stand by form against force.”

— John Ruskin

445. “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

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

— John Ruskin

447. “If there be any one principle more widely than another confessed by every utterance, or more sternly than another imprinted on every atom of the visible creation, that principle is not liberty, but law.”

— John Ruskin

448. “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

449. “One of the major obstacles impeding any positive future change in our lives is that we are too busy with our current work or activity. Levi quit his tax-work, Peter stopped fishing at lake, Paul ceased being a priest. They all left their jobs because they thought it was necessary.”

— John Ruskin

450. “Men have commonly more pleasure in the criticism which hurts than in that which is innocuous, and are more tolerant of the severity which breaks hearts and ruins fortunes than of that which falls impotently on the grave.”

— John Ruskin