“To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.”
― John Ruskin
“It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.”
― John Ruskin
“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. ”
― John Ruskin
“All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hours, and the books of all Time.”
― John Ruskin
“The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most.”
― John Ruskin
“I believe that the first test of a great man is his humility. I don’t mean by humility, doubt of his power. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not of them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.”
― John Ruskin
“A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel.”
― John Ruskin
“Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty if only we have the eyes to see them.”
― John Ruskin
“The highest reward for a man’s toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.”
― John Ruskin
“It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When
you pay too much, you lose a little money – that’s all. When you pay
too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you
bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The
common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a
lot – it can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well
to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will
have enough to pay for something better.”
― John Ruskin
“All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.”
― John Ruskin
“When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.”
― John Ruskin
“A book worth reading is worth owning.”
― John Ruskin
“Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.”
― John Ruskin
“No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, or happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than man could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being.”
― John Ruskin
“Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless.”
― John Ruskin
“In order that people may be happy in their work,
these three things are needed:
they must be fit for it;
they must not do too much of it;
and they must have a sense of success in it.”
― John Ruskin
“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.”
― John Ruskin
“Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.”
― John Ruskin
“Let every dawn of morning be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.”
― John Ruskin
“He who has truth at his heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue.”
― John Ruskin
“If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.”
― John Ruskin
“Education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.”
― John Ruskin
“There is no wealth but life.”
― John Ruskin
“Remember that the most beautiful things in life are often the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.”
― John Ruskin
“Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.”
― John Ruskin
“You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.”
― John Ruskin
“You will find it less easy to unroot faults than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do not think of your faults, still less of others faults; in every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong; honor that; rejoice in it and as you can, try to imitate it; and your faults will drop off like dead leaves when their time comes.”
― John Ruskin
“Modern traveling is not traveling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.”
― John Ruskin
“The greatest thing a human being ever does in this world is to see something… To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.”
― John Ruskin
“What we think or what we know or what we believe is in the end of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do”
― John Ruskin
“No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy.”
― John Ruskin
“Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort. There must be the will to produce a superior thing.”
― John Ruskin
“You can only possess beauty through understanding it.”
― Ruskin, John
“Cookery means…English thoroughness, French art, and Arabian hospitality; it means the knowledge of all fruits and herbs and balms and spices; it means carefulness, inventiveness, and watchfulness.”
― John Ruskin
“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
“Education…is a painful, continual and difficult work to be done in kindness, by watching, by warning,… by praise, but above all — by example.”
― John Ruskin
“Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.”
― John Ruskin
“There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest numbers of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest, who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.”
― John Ruskin
“The best thing in life aren’t things.”
― John Ruskin
“There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man’s lawful prey.”
― John Ruskin
“The entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things — not merely industrious, but to love industry — not merely learned, but to love knowledge — not merely pure, but to love purity — not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice.”
― John Ruskin
“The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers; but they rise behind her steps, not before them.”
― John Ruskin
“Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.”
― John Ruskin
“Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know in life.”
― John Ruskin
“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and what it saw in a plain way. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion–all in one.”
― Ruskin, John
“There is no music in a rest, but there is the making of music in it. In our whole life-melody the music is broken off here and there by “rests,” and we foolishly think we have come to the end of the tune. God sends a time of forced leisure, sickness, disappointed plans, frustrated efforts, and makes a sudden pause in the choral hymn of our lives, and we lament that our voices must be silent, and our part missing in the music which ever goes up to the ear of the Creator.
How does the musician read the rest? See him beat the time with unvarying count, and catch up the next note true and steady, as if no breaking place had come between.
Not without design does God write the music of our lives. But be it ours to learn the tune, and not be dismayed at the “rests.”
They are not to be slurred over nor to be omitted, nor to destroy the melody, nor to change the keynote. If we look up, God Himself will beat the time for us. With the eye on Him, we shall strike the next note full and clear.”
― John Ruskin
“When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.”
― John Ruskin
“To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered.”
― John Ruskin
“Perhaps some of my hearers this evening may have occasionally heard it stated of me that I am rather apt to contradict myself. I hope I am exceedingly apt to do so. I never met wth a question yet, of any importance, which did not need, for the right solution of it, at least one positive and one negative answer, like an equation of the second degree. Mostly, matters of any consequence are three-sided, or four-sided, or polygonal; and the trotting round a polygon is severe work for people any way stiff in their opinions. For myself, I am never satisfied that I have handled a subject properly till I have contradicted myself at least three times: but once must do for this evening.”
― John Ruskin
“Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.”
― John Ruskin