John Ruskin Quotes - Page 16

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It ought to be quite as natural and straightforward a matter for a labourer to take his pension from his parish, because he has deserved well of his parish, as for a man in higher rank to take his pension from his country, because he has deserved well of his country.

John Ruskin

Country, Men, Matter

'Unto this Last' (1862) preface, 6 (4)

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All the other passions do occasional good, but whenever pride puts in its word, everything goes wrong, and what it might really be desirable to do, quietly and innocently, it is mortally dangerous to do, proudly.

John Ruskin

Passion, Pride, Occasional

"Modern Painters".

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No 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 Ruskin

Love, People, Needs

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Every hue throughout your work is altered by every touch you add in other places.

John Ruskin

Light, Add, Hue

John Ruskin (2012). “The Elements of Drawing”, p.134, Courier Corporation

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It is a good and safe rule to sojourn in every place as if you meant to spend your life there, never omitting an opportunity of doing a kindness, or speaking a true word, or making a friend.

John Ruskin

Inspirational, Kindness, Opportunity

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There 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 Ruskin

Pain, Vulgarity Is, May

John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.59, University of Virginia Press

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Nearly all our powerful men in this age of the world are unbelievers; the best of them in doubt and misery; the worst in reckless defiance; the plurality, in plodding hesitation, doing, as well as they can, what practical work lies ready to their hands.

John Ruskin

Birthday, Powerful, Lying

"Selections From the Works of John Ruskin".

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He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.

John Ruskin

Anger, Sins Not, Would Be

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In general, when the imagination is at all noble, it is irresistible, and therefore those who can at all resist it ought to resist it. Be a plain topographer if you possibly can; if Nature meant you to be anything else, she will force you to it; but never try to be a prophet.

John Ruskin

Imagination, Trying, Noble

John Ruskin (1873). “Modern Painters”, p.18

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The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.

John Ruskin

Art, Men, Literature

John Ruskin (2015). “The Stones of Venice”, p.226, John Ruskin

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What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?

John Ruskin

Horse, Book, Thinking

John Ruskin (2001). “Sesame and Lilies”, p.43, Electric Book Company

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Natural 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 Ruskin

Mind, Want, Kind

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If it is the love of that which your work represents--if, being a landscape painter, it is love of hills and trees that moves you--if, being a figure painter, it is love of human beauty, and human soul that moves you--if, being a flower or animal painter, it is love, and wonder, and delight in petal and in limb that move you, then the Spirit is upon you, and the earth is yours, and the fullness thereof.

John Ruskin

Flower, Moving, Animal

John Ruskin, Cook (1905). “Works”

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People are always expecting to get peace in heaven: but you know whatever peace they get there will be ready-made. Whatever making of peace they can be blest for, must be on the earth here.

John Ruskin

Peace, People, Heaven

John Ruskin (1905). “Selections from Writings”

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All are to be men of genius in their degree,--rivulets or rivers, it does not matter, so that the souls be clear and pure; not dead walls encompassing dead heaps of things, known and numbered, but running waters in the sweet wilderness of things unnumbered and unknown, conscious only of the living banks, on which they partly refresh and partly reflect the flowers, and so pass on.

John Ruskin

Running, Sweet, Wall

John Ruskin (1860). “The Stones of Venice...”, p.58

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Multitudes think they like to do evil; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world.

John Ruskin

Men, Thinking, Evil

John Ruskin (1851). “The Stones of Venice: The foundations”, p.44

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In health of mind and body, men should see with their own eyes, hear and speak without trumpets, walk on their feet, not on wheels, and work and war with their arms, not with engine-beams, nor rifles warranted to kill twenty men at a shot before you can see them.

John Ruskin

War, Eye, Men

John Ruskin (2014). “Praeterita”, p.380, Everyman's Library

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Candlesticks 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 Ruskin

Giving, Listening, Saint

John Ruskin (1871). “Selections from the Writings of John Ruskin”, p.129

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As unity demanded for its expression what at first might have seemed its opposite--variety; so repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite--energy. It is the most unfailing test of beauty; nothing can be ignoble that possesses it, nothing right that has it not.

John Ruskin

Opposites, Expression, Unity

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I used to lie down on the grass and draw the blades as they grew - until every square foot of meadow, or mossy bank, became a possession to me.

John Ruskin

Lying, Squares, Feet

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All real and wholesome enjoyments possible to people have been just as possible to them since first they were made of the earth as they are now; and they are possible to them chiefly in peace. To watch the corn grow, and the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over plowshare or spade; to read, to think, to love, to hope: these are the things that make people happy.

John Ruskin

Happiness, Real, Thinking

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Every good piece of art... involves first essentially the evidence of human skill, and the formation of an actually beautiful thing by it.

John Ruskin

Beautiful, Art, Skills

John Ruskin (2013). “Selections and Essays”, p.281, Courier Corporation

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Wherever men are noble, they love bright colour; and wherever they can live healthily, bright colour is given them—in sky, sea, flowers, and living creatures.

John Ruskin

Flower, Men, Sea

John Ruskin (1875). “Proserpina: Studies of Wayside Flowers, While the Air was Yet Pure Among the Alps, and in the Scotland and England which My Father Knew”, p.95

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Painting with all its technicalities, difficulties, and peculiar ends, is nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing.

John Ruskin

Peculiar, Noble, Painting

John Ruskin, Louisa Caroline Tuthill (1872). “The True and the Beautiful in Nature, Art, Morals, and Religion, Selected from the Works of John Ruskin”, p.242

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Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test.

John Ruskin

Art, Future, Men

John Ruskin (1849). “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, p.171

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Born: February 8, 1819
Died: January 20, 1900
Occupation: Art critic
Cite this Page: Citation

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