It is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity.
John RuskinFailure is less attributable to either insufficiency of means or impatience of labours than to a confused understanding of the thing actually to be done.
John RuskinWhen 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!
John RuskinNo one can do me any good by loving me; I have more love than I need or could do any good with; but people do me good by making me love them - which isn't easy.
John RuskinNo 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