John Ruskin Quotes

When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.

There is no harm in anybody thinking that Christ is in bread. The harm is in the expectation of His presence in gunpowder.

We were not sent into this world to do anything into which we cannot put our hearts.

Every noble life leaves the fibre of it interwoven forever in the work of the world.

A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.

Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think.

Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.

In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.

The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers; but they rise behind her steps, not before them.

Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.

To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.

The Bible is the one Book to which any thoughtful man may go with any honest question of life or destiny and find the answer of God by honest searching.

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

Do 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.

The measure of any great civilization is its cities and a measure of a city's greatness is to be found in the quality of its public spaces, its parks and squares.

Genius is only a superior power of seeing.

There is material enough in a single flower for the ornament of a score of cathedrals.

Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer.

I believe the first test of a truly great man is in his humility.

If you want knowledge, you must toil for it; if food, you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it: toil is the law.

Living without an aim, is like sailing without a compass.

The best work never was and never will be done for money.

In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong.

I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this; was it done with enjoyment, was the carver happy while he was about it?

One can't be angry when one looks at a penguin.

People are eternally divided into two classes, the believer, builder, and praiser...and the unbeliever, destroyer and critic.

The best thing in life aren't things.

It is advisable that a person know at least three things, where they are, where they are going, and what they had best do under the circumstances.

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.

It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated.

Kind hearts are the garden, kind thoughts are the roots, kind words are the blossoms, kind deeds are the fruit.

No individual rain drop ever considers itself responsible for the flood.

A little group of wise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools.

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.

What we think or what we know or what we believe is in the end of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do

The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.