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John Ruskin

John Ruskin Quotes

Art critic

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Famous John Ruskin Quotes

“We shall be remembered in history as the most cruel, and therefore the most unwise, generation of men that ever yet troubled the earth: the most cruel in proportion to their sensibility, the most unwise in proportion to their science. No people, understanding pain, ever inflicted so much: no people, understanding facts, ever acted on them so little.”

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Book:The Eagle's Nest: Ten Lectures on the Relation of Natural Science to Art, Given Before the University of Oxford in Lent Term, 1872
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“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.”

IfsWellsLittlesSometimesDoneEnoughMotivationalRunningLawLosesDealsCommonBusinessPayToo MuchRiskBalanceEconomicsAddIncapableLowestSomething BetterMotivational BusinessUnwiseLittle MoneyCommon Law
Author:John Ruskin
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“It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided; but the men: divided into mere segments of men - broken into small fragments and crumbs of life, so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail.”

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Book:The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings
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“If men lived like men indeed, their houses would be temples -- temples which we should hardly dare to injure, and in which it would make us holy to be permitted to live; and there must be a strange dissolution of natural affection, a strange unthankfulness for all that homes have given and parents taught, a strange consciousness that we have been unfaithful to our fathers honor, or that our own lives are not such as would make our dwellings sacred to our children, when each man would fain build to himself, and build for the little revolution of his own life only.”

IfsMenShouldChildrenLittlesHas BeensHomeWould BeFatherHouseGivenParentNaturalConsciousnessTaughtStrangeRevolutionHonorHolyOur ChildrenSacredAffectionDareTemplesRebelliousOur FatherDwellingDissolutionUnfaithful
Book:The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings
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