John Ruskin Quotes - Page 19

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No small misery is caused by overworked and unhappy people, in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of work itself.

John Ruskin

Dark, Views, People

John Ruskin (1907). “The Religion of Ruskin: The Life and Works of John Ruskin; a Biographical and Anthological Study”

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Ornamentation is the principal part of architecture, considered as a subject of fine art.

John Ruskin

Art, Architecture, Fine

John Ruskin (2015). “Lectures on Architecture and Painting”, p.82, John Ruskin

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Temperance, in the nobler sense, does not mean a subdued and imperfect energy; it does not mean a stopping short in any good thing, as in love and in faith; but it means the power which governs the most intense energy, and prevents its acting in way but as it ought.

John Ruskin

Mean, Acting, Energy

John Ruskin (1860). “The Stones of Venice...”, p.5

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It 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 Ruskin

Art, Children, Hero

John Ruskin, Louisa Caroline Tuthill (1867). “Precious Thoughts: Moral and Religious. Gathered from the Works of John Ruskin, A. M.”, p.77

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It is impossible to tell you the perfect sweetness of the lips and closed eyes, nor the solemnity of the seal of death which is set upon the whole figure. It is, in every way, perfect--truth itself, but truth selected with inconceivable refinement of feeling.

John Ruskin

Eye, Perfect, Feelings

John Ruskin (1903). “The Works of John Ruskin”

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Men 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 Ruskin

Real, Men, Thrones

John Ruskin (1912). “The fall”

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The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.

John Ruskin

Science, Facts, Appearance

Stones of Venice Vol. III, Ch. II

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When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work, as the colour-petals out of a fruitful flower; when they are faithfully helpful and compassionate, all their emotions become steady, deep, perpetual, and vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse to the body. But now, having no true business, we pour our whole masculine energy into the false business of money-making; and having no true emotion, we must have false emotions dressed up for us to play with, not innocently, as children with dolls, but guiltily and darkly.

John Ruskin

Children, Flower, Men

John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.312, University of Virginia Press

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An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.

John Ruskin

Nature, Cities, Littles

John Ruskin (2015). “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, p.122, John Ruskin

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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. In due time, when we have nothing better to set people to work at, it may be right to let them make lace and cut jewels; but as long as there are any who have no blankets for their beds, and no rags for their bodies, so long it is blanket-making and tailoring we must set people to work at, not lace.

John Ruskin

Cutting, Jewels, Land

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What is really desired, under the name of riches, is essentially, power over men ... this power ... is in direct proportion to the poverty of the men over whom it is exercised, and in inverse proportion to the number of persons who are as rich as ourselves.

John Ruskin

Men, Names, Numbers

John Ruskin (2015). “Unto This Last”, p.244, John Ruskin

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The sculptor must paint with his chisel; half his touches are not to realize, but to put power into, the form. They are touches of light and shadow, and raise a ridge, or sink a hollow, not to represent an actual ridge or hollow, but to get a line of light, or a spot of darkness.

John Ruskin

Light, Darkness, Shadow

John Ruskin (1866). “The seven lamps of architecture”, p.142

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The word "Blue" does not mean the sensation caused by a gentian on the human eye; but it means the power of producing that sensation: and this power is always there, in the thing, whether we are there to experience it or not, and would remain there though there were not a man left on the face of the earth.

John Ruskin

Mean, Eye, Men

John Ruskin, Frederick William Roe (2013). “Selections and Essays”, p.115, Courier Corporation

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Other men used their effete faiths and mean faculties with a high moral purpose. The Venetian gave the most earnest faith, and the lordliest faculty, to gild the shadows of an antechamber, or heighten the splendours of a holiday.

John Ruskin

Holiday, Mean, Men

John Ruskin (1873). “Pt. 6-9 of leaf beauty. of cloud beauty. of ideas of relation”, p.233

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Along the iron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the fiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every hour. All vitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the central cities; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds on the city gates.

John Ruskin

Country, Sea, Bridges

John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.138, University of Virginia Press

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To give alms is nothing unless you give thought also.

John Ruskin

Giving, Literature, Alms

John Ruskin (2015). “Lectures on Architecture and Painting”, p.66, John Ruskin

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There is a satisfactory and available power in every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all persons have the power of learning French, Latin or arithmetic, in a decent and useful degree.

John Ruskin

Latin, Power, Drawing

John Ruskin (1859). “The Elements of Drawing: In Three Letters to Beginners”, p.4

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The sculptor does not work for the anatomist, but for the common observer of life and nature.

John Ruskin

Doe, Sculpture, Common

John Ruskin (1848). “Modern Painters”, p.26

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Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to oar moral nature in its purity and perfection.

John Ruskin

Perfect, Taste, Receiving

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Our 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 Ruskin

Beautiful, Death, Horse

John Ruskin (1902*). “Works”

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The beauty of the animal form is in exact proportion to the amount of moral and intellectual virtue expressed by it.

John Ruskin

Beauty, Animal, Intellectual

John Ruskin (1849). “Of ideas of beauty”, p.97

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There is but one question ultimately to be asked respecting every line you draw, Is it right or wrong? If right, it most assuredly is not a "free" line, but an intensely continent, restrained and considered line; and the action of the hand in laying it is just as decisive, and just as "free" as the hand of a first-rate surgeon in a critical incision.

John Ruskin

Hands, Lines, Firsts

John Ruskin (1869). “The Queen of the Air: Being a Study of the Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm”, p.169

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I wish they would use English instead of Greek words. When I want to know why a leaf is green, they tell me it is coloured by "chlorophyll," which at first sounds very instructive; but if they would only say plainly that a leaf is coloured green by a thing which is called "green leaf," we should see more precisely how far we had got.

John Ruskin

Science, Greek, Wish

John Ruskin (1800). “The Seven Lamps of Architecture: Also, Lectures on Architecture and Painting; The Study of Architecture; Sesame and Lilies; Unto this Last; The Queen of the Air; The Storm-cloud of the Nineteenth Century”

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Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, that the sight of them may contribute to his mental health, power, and pleasure.

John Ruskin

Art, Men, Sight

John Ruskin (1849). “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, p.7

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No divine terror will ever be found in the work of the man who wastes a colossal strength in elaborating toys; for the first lesson that terror is sent to teach us is, the value of the human soul, and the shortness of mortal time.

John Ruskin

Men, Soul, Lessons

John Ruskin (1853). “The Stones of Venice: The fall”, p.144

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

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