John Ruskin: Trending quotes

John Ruskin trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection
John Ruskin: 266 quotes33 likes

“Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort. There must be the will to produce a superior thing.”

John Ruskin

“You can only possess beauty through understanding it.”

John Ruskin

“Education… is a painful, continual and difficult work to be done in kindness, by watching, by warning,… by praise, but above all -- by example.”

John Ruskin

“There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey.”

John Ruskin

According to Ruskin scholar George P. Landow, there is no evidence that this quotation or its variants can be found in any of Ruskin's works.
[Landow, George P., A Ruskin Quotation?, VictorianWeb.org, 2007-07-27, http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/quotation.html, 2013-01-07]
Disputed

“It is not possible to find a landscape, which if painted precisely as it is, will not make an impressive picture. No one knows, till he has tried, what strange beauty and subtle composition is prepared to his hand by Nature.”

John Ruskin book Modern Painters

Volume III, part V, chapter II (1856).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

“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

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 170.

“You may either win your peace, or buy it, win it, by resistance to evil, buy it, by compromise with evil.”

John Ruskin

The Work of Iron, in Nature, Art, and Policy http://books.google.com/books?id=uYEM0Sd18DsC&q="you+may+either+win+your+peace+or+buy+it%22+%22win+it+by+resistance+to+evil%22+%22buy+it+by+compromise+with+evil"&pg=PA196#v=onepage Lecture at Tunbridge Wells (February 16, 1858).

“I believe that the root of almost every schism and heresy from which the Christian church has ever suffered, has been the effort of men to earn, rather than to receive, their salvation.”

John Ruskin

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 147.

“When we build, let us think that we build for ever.”

John Ruskin book The Seven Lamps of Architecture

Source: The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), Chapter VI: The Lamp of Memory, section 10.

“It is the glistening and softly spoken lie; the amiable fallacy; the patriotic lie of the historian, the provident lie of the politician, the zealous lie of the partisan, the merciful lie of the friend, and the careless lie of each man to himself, that cast that black mystery over humanity, through which we thank any man who pierces, as we would thank one who dug a well in a desert.”

John Ruskin book The Seven Lamps of Architecture

Source: The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), Chapter II: The Lamp of Truth, section 1.

“Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect in its own bad way.”

John Ruskin book The Stones of Venice

Volume II, chapter VI, section 24 http://books.google.com/books?id=AwICAAAAYAAJ&amp;q=%22Of+human+work+none+but+what+is+bad+can+be+perfect+in+its+own+bad+way%22&amp;pg=PA189#v=onepage. <br class="br">The Stones of Venice (1853)

“Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.”

John Ruskin

The Two Paths, (1859).

“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 book Modern Painters

Volume V, part IX, chapter XI (1860).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

“Of all God's gifts to the sight of man, colour is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn.”

John Ruskin book The Stones of Venice

Volume II, chapter V, section 30.
The Stones of Venice (1853)

“In old times, men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith; in later times, they used the objects of faith that they might show their powers of painting.”

John Ruskin book The Stones of Venice

Volume II, chapter IV, section 103.
The Stones of Venice (1853)

“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 book Unto This Last

Essay II: "The Veins of Wealth," section 29.
Unto This Last (1860)

“.. 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 book Unto This Last

Essay II: "The Veins of Wealth"
Unto This Last (1860)

“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 book Unto This Last

Essay II: page 280.
Unto This Last (1860)

“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?</b”

John Ruskin

Sesame and Lilies, lecture II: Lilies http://www.fullbooks.com/Sesame-and-Lilies3.html