The whole difference between a man of genius and other men, it has been said a thousand times, and most truly, is that the first remains in great part a child, seeing with the large eyes of children, in perpetual wonder, not conscious of much knowledge--conscious, rather of infinite ignorance, and yet infinite power; a fountain of eternal admiration, delight, and creative force within him meeting the ocean of visible and governable things around him.
John RuskinGod will put up with a great many things in the human heart, but there is one thing that He will not put up with in it--a second place. He who offers God a second place, offers Him no place.
John RuskinScience deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves; and art exclusively with things as they affect the human sense and human soul.
John RuskinThe truth of Nature is a part of the truth of God; to him who does not search it out, darkness; to him who does, infinity.
John RuskinIf there be any one principle more widely than another confessed by every utterance, or more sternly than another imprinted on every atom of the visible creation, that principle is not liberty, but law.
John RuskinWhat is poetry? The suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions.
John RuskinKind hearts are the garden, kind thoughts are the roots, kind words are the blossoms, kind deeds are the fruit.
John RuskinThe only way to understand these difficult parts of the Bible, or even to approach them with safety, is first to read and obey the easy ones.
John RuskinThere is no action so slight or so mean but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled thereby.
John RuskinTo use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own, and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.
John RuskinIt is not so much in buying pictures as in being pictures, that you can encourage a noble school. The best patronage of art is not that which seeks for the pleasures of sentiment in a vague ideality, nor for beauty of form in a marble image, but that which educates your children into living heroes, and binds down the flights and the fondnesses of the heart into practical duty and faithful devotion.
John RuskinModern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.
John RuskinNatural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities.
John RuskinDisorder in a drawing-room is vulgar; in an antiquary's study, not; the black battle-stain on a soldier's face is not vulgar, but the dirty face of a housemaid is.
John RuskinThe beginning and almost the end of all good law is that everyone shall work for their bread and receive good bread for their work.
John RuskinThe entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things — not merely industrious, but to love industry — not merely learned, but to love knowledge — not merely pure, but to love purity — not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice.
John RuskinIt 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 RuskinBetter the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.
John RuskinMy mother's influence in molding my character was conspicuous. She forced me to learn daily long chapters of the Bible by heart. To that discipline and patient, accurate resolve I owe not only much of my general power of taking pains, but of the best part of my taste for literature.
John RuskinLife being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.
John RuskinPunishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.
John RuskinThere is no climate, no place, and scarcely an hour, in which nature does not exhibit color which no mortal effort can imitate or approach. For all our artificial pigments are, even when seen under the same circumstances, dead and lightless beside her living color; nature exhibits her hues under an intensity of sunlight which trebles their brilliancy.
John RuskinIt is far better to give work that is above a person, than to educate the person to be above their work.
John RuskinMusic when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.
John RuskinIf some people really see angels where others see only empty space, let them paint the angels: only let not anybody else think they can paint an angel too, on any calculated principles of the angelic.
John RuskinIt is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them. Generally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way; and we want downright facts at present more than anything else.
John RuskinYou talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time: I tell you, Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm - we who smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish - ourselves who consume: we are the mildew, and the flame.
John RuskinNo amount of pay ever made a good soldier, a good teacher, a good artist, or a good workman.
John RuskinSuccess by the laws of competition signifies a victory over others by obtaining the direction and profits of their work. This is the real source of all great riches.
John RuskinTrue 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.
John RuskinThere's no music in rest, but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody, always talking of perseverance and courage and fortitude; but patience is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude, and the rarest, too.
John RuskinThe question is not what man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate.
John RuskinHe 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.
John RuskinIn all things that live there are certain irregularities, and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry.
John RuskinOur respect for the dead, when they are just dead, is something wonderful, and the way we show it more wonderful still. We show it with black feathers and black horses; we show it with black dresses and black heraldries; we show it with costly obelisks and sculptures of sorrow, which spoil half of our beautiful cathedrals. We show it with frightful gratings and vaults, and lids of dismal stone, in the midst of the quiet grass; and last, and not least, we show it by permitting ourselves to tell any number of falsehoods we think amiable or credible in the epitaph.
John RuskinUnless we perform divine service with every willing act of our life, we never perform it at all.
John RuskinHigh art consists neither in altering, nor in improving nature; but in seeking throughout nature for 'whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are pure;' in loving these, in displaying to the utmost of the painter's power such loveliness as is in them, and directing the thoughts of others to them by winning art, or gentle emphasis.
John Ruskin