As long as there are cold and nakedness in the land around you, so long can there be no question at all but that splendor of dress is a crime.
John RuskinThe force of the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbour's pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you.
John RuskinLabour without joy is base. Labour without sorrow is base. Sorrow without labour is base. Joy without labour is base.
John RuskinOur 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.
John RuskinMy entire delight was in observing without being myself noticed,- if I could have been invisible, all the better. . . to be in the midst of it, and rejoice and wonder at it, and help it if I could, - happier if it needed no help of mine, - this was the essential love of Nature in me, this the root of all that I have usefully become, and the light of all that I have rightly learned.
John Ruskin