Famous Quotes

Quotes by John Ruskin

• Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.
• Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.
• 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.
• No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.
• No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.
• No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.
• No human being, however great, or powerful, was ever so free as a fish.
• No lying knight or lying priest ever prospered in any age, but especially not in the dark ones. Men prospered then only in following an openly declared purpose, and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds.
• No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.
• Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.
• Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.
• Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
• The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.
• The child who desires education will be bettered by it the child who dislikes it disgraced.
• The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work.
• The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.
• The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don't mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.
• The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world... to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.
• 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.
• The sky is the part of creation in which nature has done for the sake of pleasing man.
• The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.
• The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.
• There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.
• There is no wealth but life.
• To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.
• To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.
• We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it.
• When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.
• Whether for life or death, do your own work well.
• You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil buy it, by compromise with evil.