John Ruskin Quotes

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

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.

Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives, the cumulative experience of many masters of craftsmanship. Quality also marks the search for an ideal after necessity has been satisfied and mere usefulness achieved.

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.

There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey.

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.

I do not believe that any peacock envies another peacock his tail, because every peacock is persuaded that his own tail is the finest in the world. The consequence of this is that peacocks are peaceable birds.

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

There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.

Blue color is everlastingly appointed by the deity to be a source of delight.

Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.

The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.

They are good furniture pictures, unworthy of praise, and undeserving of blame.

When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.

There is a working class - strong and happy - among both rich and poor: there is an idle class - weak, wicked, and miserable - among both rich and poor.

When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for our use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will look upon with praise and thanksgiving in their hearts.

Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.

There is large difference between indolent impatience of labor and intellectual impatience of delay, large difference between leaving things unfinished because we have more to do or because we are satisfied with what we have done.

You talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time: I tell you, Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm - we who smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish - ourselves who consume: we are the mildew, and the flame.

The step between practical and theoretic science, is the step between the miner and the geologist, the apocathecary and the chemist.

It does not matter what the whip is; it is none the less a whip, because you have cut thongs for it out of your own souls.

Modern travelling is not travelling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world... to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

Conceit may puff a man up, but never prop him up.

Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.

There is material enough in a single flower for the ornament of a score of cathedrals.

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.

There is no solemnity so deep, to a right-thinking creature, as that of dawn.

In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.

A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.

I believe the first test of a truly great man is in his humility.

I will not kill or hurt any living creature needlessly, nor destroy any beautiful thing, but will strive to save and comfort all gentle life, and guard and perfect all natural beauty upon the earth.

When we build ... let it not be for present delights nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think ... that a time is to come when these stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labor, and the wrought substance of them, See! This our fathers did for us!

The true end of education is not only to make the young learned, but to make them love learning; not only to make them industrious, but to make them love industry; not only to make them virtuous, but to make them love virtue; not only to make them just, but to make them hunger and thirst after justice.

The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.

To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered.

Kind hearts are the garden, kind thoughts are the roots, kind words are the blossoms, kind deeds are the fruit.

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.

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.

No individual rain drop ever considers itself responsible for the flood.

Do not think of your faults, still less of other's faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.

People are eternally divided into two classes, the believer, builder, and praiser...and the unbeliever, destroyer and critic.

The actual flower is the plant's highest fulfilment, and are not here exclusively for herbaria, county floras and plant geography: they are here first of all for delight.

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

When we build, let us think that we build forever.