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John Ruskin

98 quotes

“There are, indeed, two forms of discontent: one laborious, the other indolent and complaining. We respect the man of laborious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is peace, or his ambition meekness. It is because of the special connection of meekness with contentment that it is promised that the meek shall "inherit the earth." Neither covetous men, nor the Grave, can inherit anything; they can but consume. Only contentment can possess.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) first seen 1860 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Volume V, part IX, chapter XI (1860)
“I choose my physician and my clergyman, thus indicating my sense of the quality of their work.” By all means, also, choose your bricklayer; that is the proper reward of the good workman, to be “chosen.” The natural and right system respecting all labour is, that it should be paid at a fixed rate, but the good workman employed, and the bad workman unemployed. The false, unnatural, and destructive system is when the bad workman is allowed to offer his work at half-price, and either take the place of the good, or force him by his competition to work for an inadequate sum.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“..the art of becoming 'rich', in the common sense, is not absolutely nor finally the art of accumulating much money for ourselves, but also of contriving that our neighbour shall have less. In accurate terms, it is 'the art of establishing the maximum inequality in your own favour'.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Inequalities of wealth, unjustly established, have assuredly injured the nation in which they exist during their establishment; and, unjustly directed, they injure it yet more during their existence. But inequalities of wealth justly established, benefit the nation in the course of their establishment; and, nobly used, aid it yet more by their existence.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And with respect to the mode in which these general principles affect the secure possession of property, so far am I from invalidating such security, that the whole gist of these papers will be found ultimately to aim at an extension in its range; and whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We need examples of people who, leaving Heaven to decide whether they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek — not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, self-possession; and honouring themselves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of peace.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) first seen 1881 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Essay IV: "Ad Valorem," (p. 135 of 1881 edition)
“There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest numbers of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest, who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now, if we want to work for this [God's] kingdom, and to bring it, and enter into it, there is one curious condition to be first accepted. You must enter into it as children, or not at all.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A little group of wise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Labour without joy is base. Labour without sorrow is base. Sorrow without labour is base. Joy without labour is base.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education. Make them men first, and religious men afterwards, and all will be sound; but a knave's religion is always the rottenest thing about him.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The first duty of a state is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed, and educated, till it attains years of discretion.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as its greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And besides; the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one; distribute the earth as you will, the principal question remains inexorable, —Who is to dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay?”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He only is advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into Living peace. And the men who have this life in them are the true lords or kings of the earth — they, and they only.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Levi's station in life was the receipt of custom; and Peter's, the shore of Galilee; and Paul's, the antechambers of the High- Priest,— which "station in life" each had to leave, with brief notice.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Give such a girl any true work that will make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with the consciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the better for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform itself into a majesty of radiant and beneficent peace.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The secret of language is the secret of sympathy and its full charm is possible only to the gentle.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The entire vitality of art depends upon its being either full of truth, or full of use; and that, however pleasant, wonderful, or impressive it may be in itself, it must yet be of inferior kind, and tend to deeper inferiority, unless it has clearly one of these main objects, — either to state a true thing, or to adorn a serviceable one.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We shall be remembered in history as the most cruel, and therefore the most unwise, generation of men that ever yet troubled the earth: — the most cruel in proportion to their sensibility, — the most unwise in proportion to their science. No people, understanding pain, ever inflicted so much: no people, understanding facts, ever acted on them so little.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What do you suppose makes all men look back to the time of childhood with so much regret (if their childhood has been, in any moderate degree, healthy or peaceful)? That rich charm, which the least possession had for us, was in consequence of the poorness of our treasures.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ignorance, which is contented and clumsy, will produce what is imperfect, but not offensive. But ignorance discontented and dexterous, learning what it cannot understand, and imitating what it cannot enjoy, produces the most loathsome forms of manufacture that can disgrace or mislead humanity.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have always found that the less we speak of our intentions, the more chance there is of our realizing them.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface to the first edition, 1865
“All of one's life is a music, if one touches the notes rightly and in time.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do not think of your faults; still less of others' faults: in every person who comes near you, look for what is good and strong: honour that; rejoice in it; and, as you can, try to imitate it.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God is a kind Father. He sets us all in the place where He wishes us to be employed; and that employment is truly "our Father's business." He chooses work for every creature which will be delightful to them, if they do it simply and humbly. He gives us always strength enough, and sense enough, for what He wants us to do; if we either tire ourselves, or puzzle ourselves, it is our own fault. And we may always be sure, whatever we are doing, that we cannot be pleasing Him, if we are not happy ourselves.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All you have really to do is to keep your back as straight as you can; and not think about what is upon it. The real and essential meaning of "virtue" is that straightness of back.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An unimaginative person can neither be reverent nor kind.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) first seen 1873 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fors Clavigera, letter xxxiv (October 1873)
“I am far more provoked at being thought foolish by foolish people, than pleased at being thought sensible by sensible people; and the average proportion of the numbers of each is not to my advantage.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) first seen 1874 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fors Clavigera, letter xxxvii, (1 January 1874)
“For this dead Venice once taught us to be merchants, sailors and gentlemen; and this dying England taught the Americans all they have of speech, or thought, hitherto. What thoughts they have not learned from England are foolish thoughts; what words they have not learned from England, unseemly words; the vile among them not being able even to be humorous parrots, but only obscene mocking birds.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) first seen 1874 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fors Clavigera,, letter xlii, (1 June 1874; quoted by William Archer in America To-Day)
“Human work must be done thoroughly and honourably because we are now men; whether we ever expect to be angels, or ever were slugs, being practically no matter.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) first seen 1877 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fors Clavigera, letter lxxvi (4 March 1877)
“The zealous care with which J. M. W. Turner endeavoured to do his duty, is proved by a large existing series of drawings, exquisitely tinted, and often completely coloured, all by his own hand, of the most difficult perspective subjects—illustrating not only directions of line, but effects of light - with a care and completion which would put the work of any ordinary teacher to utter shame. In teaching generally — he would neither waste time nor spare it - he would look over a student's drawing at the Academy, point to a defective part, make a scratch on the paper at the side, say nothing. If the student saw what was wanted, and did it, Turner was delighted; but if the student could not follow. Turner left him.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) first seen 1850 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote, c. 1850's; describing Turner's perspective lectures; as quoted in The life of J.M.W. Turner, Volume II, George Walter Thornbury; Hurst and Blackett Publishers, London, 1862, p. 108
“Of all the bête, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-blooded stuff I ever saw on a human stage, that thing last night beat — as far as the acting and story went — and of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, tuneless and scrannelpipiest — tongs and boniest — doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest, so far as the sound went. I never was so relieved, so far as I can remember in my life, by the stopping of any sound — not excepting railway whistles — as I was by the cessation of the cobbler’s bellowing.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) first seen 1882 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to (June 30, 1882)
“My entire delight was in observing without being myself noticed,— if I could have been invisible, all the better. I was absolutely interested in men and their ways, as I was interested in marmots and chamois, in tomtits and trout. If only they would stay still and let me look at them, and not get into their holes and up their heights! The living inhabitation of the world — the grazing and nesting in it, — the spiritual power of the air, the rocks, the waters, to be in the midst of it, and rejoice and wonder at it, and help it if I could, — happier if it needed no help of mine, — this was the essential love of Nature in me, this the root of all that I have usefully become, and the light of all that I have rightly learned.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) first seen 1885 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Praeterita, volume I, chapter IX (1885-1889)
“You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves….On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make him a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the clouds settling upon him.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that it divided; but the men: — Divided into mere segments of men — broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished, — sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is — we should think that there might be some loss in it also. And the great cry that rises from our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this, — that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads can be met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching, for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach at them, if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can only be met by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labour.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are to remember, in the first place, that the arrangement of colours and lines is an art analogous to the composition of music, and entirely independent of the representation of facts. Good colouring does not necessarily convey the image of anything but itself. It consists of certain proportions and arrangements of rays of light, but not in likeness to anything. A few touches of certain greys and purples laid by a master's hand on white paper will be good colouring; as more touches are added beside them, we may find out that they were intended to represent a dove's neck, and we may praise, as the drawing advances, the perfect imitation of the dove's neck. But the good colouring does not consist in that imitation, but in the abstract qualities and relations of the grey and purple.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One of the chief reasons for the maintenance of an army is the advantage of the military system as a method of education. The most fiery and headstrong, who are often also the most gifted and generous of your youths, have always a tendency both in the lower and upper classes to offer themselves for your soldiers: others, weak and unserviceable in the civil capacity, are tempted or entrapped into the army in a fortunate hour for them: out of this fiery or uncouth material, it is only soldier's discipline which can bring the full value and power. Even at present, by mere force of order and authority, the army is the salvation of myriads; and men who, under other circumstances, would have sunk into lethargy or dissipation, are redeemed into noble life by a service which at once summons and directs their energies.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Primarily, which is very notable and curious, I observe that men of business rarely know the meaning of the word 'rich'. At least, if they know, they do not in their reasoning allow for the fact, that it is a relative word, implying its opposite 'poor' as positively as the word 'north' implies its opposite 'south'. Men nearly always speak and write as if riches were absolute, and it were possible, by following certain scientific precepts, for everybody to be rich. Whereas riches are a power like that electricity, acting only through inequalities or negations of itself. The force of the guinea you have in your pockets depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbour's pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you; the degree of power it possesses depends accurately upon the need or desire he has for it,— and the art of making yourself rich, in the ordinary mercantile economist's sense, is therefore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbour poor.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Suppose any person to be put in possession of a large estate of fruitful land, with rich beds of gold in its gravel; countless herds of cattle in its pastures; houses, and gardens, and storehouses full of useful stores; but suppose, after all, that he could get no servants? In order that he may be able to have servants, some one in his neighbourhood must be poor, and in want of his gold — or his corn. Assume that no one is in want of either, and that no servants are to be had. He must, therefore, bake his own bread, make his own clothes, plough his own ground, and shepherd his own flocks. His gold will be as useful to him as any other yellow pebbles on his estate. His stores must rot, for he cannot consume them. He can eat no more than another man could eat, and wear no more than another man could wear. He must lead a life of severe and common labour to procure even ordinary comforts; he will be ultimately unable to keep either houses in repair, or fields in cultivation; and forced to content himself with a poor man's portion of cottage and garden, in the midst of a desert of waste land, trampled by wild cattle, and encumbered by ruins of palaces, which he will hardly mock at himself by calling "his own.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ask a great money-maker what he wants to do with his money, — he never knows. He doesn't make it to do anything with it. He gets it only that he may get it. "What will you make of what you have got?" you ask. "Well, I'll get more," he says. Just as at cricket, you get more runs. There's no use in the runs, but to get more of them than other people is the game. So all that great foul city of London there, — rattling, growling, smoking, stinking, — a ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork, pouring out poison at every pore, — you fancy it is a city of work? Not a street of it! It is a great city of play; very nasty play and very hard play, but still play.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The work of men" — and what is that? Well, we may any of us know very quickly, on the condition of being wholly ready to do it. But many of us are for the most part thinking, not of what we are to do, but of what we are to get; and the best of us are sunk into the sin of Ananias, and it is a mortal one — we want to keep back part of the price; and we continually talk of taking up our cross, as if the only harm in a cross was the weight of it — as if it was only a thing to be carried, instead of to be — crucified upon. "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In all base schools of art, the craftsman is dependent for his bread on originality; that is to say, on finding in himself some fragment of isolated faculty, by which his work may be distinct from that of other men. We are ready enough to take delight in our little doings, without any such stimulus; — what must be the effect of the popular applause which continually suggests that the little thing we can separately do is as excellent as it is singular; and what the effect of the bribe, held out to us through the whole of life, to produce — it being also in our peril not to produce — something different from the work of our neighbors?”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You think it a great triumph to make the sun draw brown landscapes for you! That was also a discovery, and some day may be useful. But the sun had drawn landscapes before for you, not in brown, but in green, and blue, and all imaginable colours, here in England. Not one of you ever looked at them, then; not one of you cares for the loss of them, now, when you have shut the sun out with smoke, so that he can draw nothing more, except brown blots through a hole in a box. There was a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell, once upon a time, divine as the vale of Tempe; you might have seen the Gods there morning and evening, — Apollo and all the sweet Muses of the Light — walking in fair procession on the lawns of it, and to and fro among the pinnacles of its crags. You cared neither for Gods nor grass, but for cash (which you did not know the way to get); you thought you could get it by what the Times calls "Railroad Enterprise." You Enterprised a Railroad through the valley — you blasted its rocks away, heaped thousands of tons of shale into its lovely stream. The valley is gone, and the gods with it; and now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half-an-hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton; which you think a lucrative process of exchange — you Fools Everywhere.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) first seen 1871 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fors Clavigera, letter v (1 May 1871)