What right have you to take the word wealth, which originally meant well-being, and degrade and narrow it by confining it to certain sorts of material objects measured by money.
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 RuskinThe greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.
John RuskinMen are merely on a lower or higher stage of an eminence, whose summit is God's throne infinitely above all; and there is just as much reason for the wisest as for the simplest man being discontent with his position, as respects the real quantity of knowledge he possesses.
John RuskinDo 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.
John RuskinI 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.
John RuskinMilton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak.
John RuskinNo one can ask honestly or hopefully to be delivered from temptation unless he has himself honestly and firmly determined to do the best he can to keep out of it.
John RuskinI do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal, but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his nonvulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature-not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way; and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honor.
John RuskinObedience is, indeed, founded on a kind of freedom, else it would become mere subjugation, but that freedom is only granted that obedience may be more perfect; and thus while a measure of license is necessary to exhibit the individual energies of things, the fairness and pleasantness and perfection of them all consist in their restraint.
John RuskinGreatness is the aggregation of minuteness; nor can its sublimity be felt truthfully by any mind unaccustomed to the affectionate watching of what is least.
John RuskinCandlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, the sailor perceives these decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day; and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all; and they give plenary and brief without listening to confession.
John RuskinOne evening, when I was yet in my nurse's arms, I wanted to touch the tea urn, which was boiling merrily ... My nurse would have taken me away from the urn, but my mother said "Let him touch it." So I touched it - and that was my first lesson in the meaning of liberty.
John RuskinMen cannot not live by exchanging articles, but producing them. They live by work not trade.
John RuskinIn old times men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith, in later times they use the objects of faith to show their powers of painting.
John RuskinGod intends no man to live in this world without working, but it seems to me no less evident that He intends every man to be happy in his work.
John RuskinLet every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.
John RuskinNo art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.
John Ruskin... Amongst all the mechanical poison that this terrible nineteenth century has poured upon men, it has given us at any rate one antidote - the Daguerreotype. (1845)
John RuskinHow false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty: most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but its being, was impossible..... There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment.
John RuskinThere is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.
John RuskinMany thoughts are so dependent upon the language in which they are clothed that they would lose half their beauty if otherwise expressed.
John RuskinWhy is one man richer than another? Because he is more industrious, more persevering and more sagacious.
John RuskinEducation is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them.
John RuskinAs 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 RuskinYou might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.
John RuskinThe power of association is stronger than the power of beauty; therefore, the power of association is the power of beauty.
John RuskinThe strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.
John RuskinIt is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.
John RuskinThe infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable; not concealed, but incomprehensible; it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure unsearchable sea.
John RuskinThough you may have known clever men who were indolent, you never knew a great man who was so; and when I hear a young man spoken of as giving promise of great genius, the first question I ask about him always is, Does he work?
John RuskinSo far as I have myself observed, the distinctive character of a child is to live always in the tangible present.
John RuskinBread of flour is good; but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book.
John RuskinEducation is the leading human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them; and these two objects are always attainable together, and by the same means; the training which makes man happiest in themselves also makes them most serviceable to others.
John RuskinNothing 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.
John RuskinChildhood 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.
John RuskinThere 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.
John Ruskin