John Ruskin Quotes

"Civilization is the making of civil persons."

"The entire object of true education, is to make people not merely do the right thing, but to enjoy right things; not merely industrious, but to love industry; not merely learned, but to love knowledge."

"We have seen when the earth had to be prepared for the habitation of man, a veil, as it were, of intermediate being was spread between him and its darkness, in which were joined in a subdued measure, the stability and insensibility of the earth, and the passion and perishing of mankind."

"You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil"

"No one can become rich by the efforts of only their toil, but only by the discovery of some method of taxing the labor of others."

"The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most."

"There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather."

"The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it."

"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."

"Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness."

"Men don't and can't live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don't live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of laborers Unions."

"It is his restraint that is honorable to a person, not their liberty."

"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?"

"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."

"Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons."

"To give alms is nothing unless you give thought also."

"Cursing is invoking the assistance of a spirit to help you inflict suffering. Swearing on the other hand, is invoking, only the witness of a spirit to an statement you wish to make."

"It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately."

"Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it."

"It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists."