Top 450 John Ruskin Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “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

402. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

408. “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

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

— John Ruskin

410. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

414. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

419. “A splendour of miscellaneous spirits.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

421. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

424. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

427. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

431. “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

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

— John Ruskin

433. “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

434. “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

435. “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

436. “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

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

— John Ruskin

439. “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

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

— John Ruskin

441. “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

442. “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

443. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

446. “Always stand by form against force.”

— John Ruskin

447. “It is among children, and as children only, that you will find your healing and true wisdom for your teaching.”

— John Ruskin

448. “The proof of a thing’s being right is that it has power over the heart; that it excites us, wins us, or helps us.”

— John Ruskin

449. “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

450. “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