Top 450 John Ruskin Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “If the thing is impossible, you need not trouble yourselves about it; if possible, try for it.”

— John Ruskin

402. “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

403. “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

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

— John Ruskin

405. “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

406. “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

407. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

415. “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

416. “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

417. “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

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

— John Ruskin

419. “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

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

— John Ruskin

421. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

428. “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

429. “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

430. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

433. “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

434. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

437. “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

438. “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

439. “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

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

— John Ruskin

441. “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

442. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

445. “Always stand by form against force.”

— John Ruskin

446. “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

447. “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

448. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin