“No peace was ever won from fate by subterfuge or argument; no peace is ever in store for any of us, but that which we shall win by victory over shame or sin--victory over the sin that oppresses, as well as over that which corrupts.”
“You may assuredly find perfect peace, if you are resolved to do that which your Lord has plainly required--and content that He should indeed require no more of you--than to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with Him.”
Source: The works of John Ruskin
“Milton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak.”
“It is not the weariness of mortality, but the strength of divinity, which we have to recognize in all mighty things; and that is just what we now never recognize, but think that we are to do great things by help of iron bars and perspiration. Alas! we shall do nothing that way but lose some pounds of our own weight.”
Source: The true and the beautiful in nature, art, morals, and religion
“The power of association is stronger than the power of beauty; therefore, the power of association is the power of beauty.”
Source: Of ideas of beauty
“Repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite,--energy.”
Source: Modern Painters ...: pt. 3. Of the imaginative and theoretic faculties. 4th ed
“Sky is the part of creation in which Nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her.”
Source: Selections and Essays
“All great song, from the first day when human lips contrived syllables, has been sincere song.”
Source: The Queen of the Air: Being a Study of the Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm
“God is a kind Father. He sets us all in the places where he wishes us to be employed. He chooses work for every creature which will be delightful to them if they do it simply and humbly. He gives us always strength enough and sense enough for what he wants us to do.”
Source: The Ethics of the Dust: Ten Lectures to Little Housewives on the Elements of Crystallisation
“Anything which elevates the mind is sublime. Greatness of matter, space, power, virtue or beauty, are all sublime.”
“Superstition, in all times and among all nations, is the fear of a spirit whose passions are those of a man, whose acts are the acts of a man; who is present in some places, not in others; who makes no places holy and not others; who is kind to one person, unkind to another; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention you pay him, or praise you refuse to him; who is hostile generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrifice of a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. This, whatever form of faith it colors, is the essence of superstition.”
Source: The Religion of Ruskin: The Life and Works of John Ruskin; a Biographical and Anthological Study
“Our purity of taste is best tested by its universality, for if we can only admire this thing or that, we maybe use that our cause for liking is of a finite and false nature.”
Source: Selections and Essays
“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.”
“True taste is forever growing, learning, reading, worshipping, laying its hand upon its mouth because it is astonished, casting its shoes from off its feet because it finds all ground holy.”
Source: Of ideas of beauty
“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.”
Source: The Stones of Venice: The fall
“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.”
Source: Modern Painters: pt. 4. Of many things
“The highest thoughts are those which are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any composition and praise to which it is entitled are in exact proportion to its dependency of language or expression.”
“In mortals there is a care for trifles which proceeds from love and conscience, and is most holy; and a care for trifles which comes of idleness and frivolity, and is most base. And so, also, there is a gravity proceeding from thought, which is most noble; and a gravity proceeding from dulness and mere incapability of enjoyment, which is most base.”
Source: Precious Thoughts: Moral and Religious. Gathered from the Works of John Ruskin, A. M.
“A forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable, in effect; a mass of one species of tree is sublime.”
Source: Pt. 3, sections 1-2 of the imaginative and theoretic faculties
“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.”
Source: Modern Painters: pt. 1. Of general principles. pt. 2 Of truth
“Absolute ugliness is admitted as rarely as perfect beauty; but degrees of it more or less distinct are associated with whatever has the nature of death and sin, just as beauty is associated with what has the nature of virtue and of life.”
Source: Selections from the Writings of John Ruskin
“He who has once stood beside the grave, to look back upon the companionship which has been forever closed, feeling how impotent there are the wild love, or the keen sorrow, to give one instant's pleasure to the pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the departed spirit for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur that debt to the heart which can only be discharged to the dust.”
Source: Modern Painters
“Variety is a positive requisite even in the character of our food.”
“There is nothing that this age, from whatever standpoint we survey it, needs more, physically, intellectually, and morally, than thorough ventilation.”
“If you do not wish for His kingdom do not pray for it. But if you do you must do more than pray for it, you must work for it.”
Source: The Crown of Wild Olive
“Work first, and then rest.”
Source: The seven lamps of architecture
“That admiration of the 'neat but not gaudy,' which is commonly reported to have influenced the devil when he painted his tail pea green.”
Source: The Poetry of Architecture - Cottage, Villa, Etc - To Which Is Added Suggestions on Works of Art
“If the thing is impossible, you need not trouble yourselves about it; if possible, try for it.”
Source: Lectures on Architecture and Painting
“There is rough work to be done, and rough men must do it; there is gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do it.”
Source: The Crown of Wild Olive
“Why is one man richer than another? Because he is more industrious, more persevering and more sagacious.”
Source: The True and the Beautiful in Nature, Art, Morals, and Religion, Selected from the Works of John Ruskin
“Mighty of heart, mighty of mind, magnanimous-to be this is indeed to be great in life.”
Source: Sesame and Lilies, etc
“It is better to be nobly remembered than nobly born.”
Source: Precious Thoughts: Moral and Religious. Gathered from the Works of John Ruskin, A. M.
“If we pretend to have reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves and our work. God's work only may express that, but ours may never have that sentence written upon it, Behold it was very good.”
Source: On the nature of Gothic architecture: and herein of the true functions of the workman in art. Being the greater part of the 6th chapter of the 2nd vol. of 'Stones of Venice'. [48 p.].
“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.”
Source: Modern Painters ...: pt. 3. Of the imaginative and theoretic faculties. 4th ed
“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.”
Source: The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings
“He who has learned what is commonly considered the whole art of painting, that is, the art of representing any natural object faithfully, has as yet only learned the language by which his thoughts are to be expressed.”
Source: The True and the Beautiful in Nature, Art, Morals, and Religion, Selected from the Works of John Ruskin
“Value is the life-giving power of anything; cost, the quantity of labour required to produce it; its price, the quantity of labourwhich its possessor will take in exchange for it.”
Source: The Crown of Wild Olive
“It is perhaps the principal admirableness of the Gothic schools of architecture, that they receive the results of the labour of inferior minds; and out of fragments full of imperfectionraise up a stately and unaccusable whole.”
“If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses.”
Source: The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin
“The object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy them”
Source: The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings
“There are, indeed, two forms of discontent: one laborious, the other indolent and complaining. We respect the man of laborious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is peace, or his ambition meekness. It is because of the special connection of meekness with contentment that it is promised that the meek shall 'inherit the earth.' Neither covetous men, nor the grave, can inherit anything; they can but consume. Only contentment can possess.”
Source: Modern Painters: pt. 6. Of leaf beauty. pt. 7. Of Cloud beauty. pt. 8-9. Of ideas of relation
“Architecture ... the adaptation of form to resist force.”
Source: Val D'Arno: Ten Lectures on the Tuscan Art Directly Antecedent to the Florentine Year of Victories
“It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated.”
Source: Modern Painters
“Failure is less attributable to either insufficiency of means or impatience of labours than to a confused understanding of the thing actually to be done.”
Source: The seven lamps of architecture
“He who offers God a second place offers Him no place.”
Source: Precious Thoughts: Moral and Religious. Gathered from the Works of John Ruskin, A. M.
“No nation can last which has made a mob of itself, however generous at heart.”
Source: The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings
“The wisest men are wise to the full in death.”
Source: John Ruskin's Works
“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.”
Source: Selections from the Writings of John Ruskin
“You will never love art well until you love what she mirrors better.”
“A nation which lives a pastoral and innocent life never decorates the shepherd's staff or the plough-handle; but races who live by depredation and slaughter nearly always bestow exquisite ornaments on the quiver, the helmet, and the spear.”
Source: The Two Paths: Being Lectures on Art, and Its Application to Decoration and Manufacture, Delivered in 1858-9
