Top 450 John Ruskin Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.”

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

404. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

407. “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

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

— John Ruskin

409. “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

410. “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

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

— John Ruskin

412. “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

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

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

— John Ruskin

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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

420. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

423. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

426. “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

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

— John Ruskin

428. “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

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

— John Ruskin

430. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

433. “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

434. “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

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

— John Ruskin

436. “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

437. “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

438. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin

442. “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

443. “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

444. “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

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

— John Ruskin

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

— 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