John Ruskin: Work

John Ruskin was English writer and art critic. Explore interesting quotes on work.

John Ruskin: 266 quotes33 likes

“When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work”

Sesame and Lilies.
Context: 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.

“In order that people may be happy in their work,
these three things are needed:
they must be fit for it;
they must not do too much of it;
and they must have a sense of success in it.”

John Ruskin

“If you want to work for the kingdom of God, and to bring it, and enter into it, there is just one condition to be first accepted. You must enter into it as children, or not at all.”

John Ruskin

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 269.

“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 book Unto This Last

Essay I: "The Roots of Honour," section 29.
Unto This Last (1860)
Context: “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.

“When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.”

John Ruskin

Widely attributed on the Internet to John Ruskin; see this Google search https://www.google.com/search?num=50&q=%2B%22When+love+and+skill+work+together%2C+expect+a+masterpiece.%22+%2B%22John+Ruskin%22+-%22Charles+Reade%22&oq=%2B%22When+love+and+skill+work+together%2C+expect+a+masterpiece.%22+%2B%22John+Ruskin%22+-%22Charles+Reade%22&gs_l=serp.12...143064.148395.0.150598.2.2.0.0.0.0.108.196.1j1.2.0....0...1c.1.64.serp..0.0.0.JURsIFvRl34 for thousands of pages containing the quote AND "John Ruskin" but NOT "Charles Reade".<br><br>This is actually from Put Yourself in His Place by Charles Reade. <br class="br">Misattributed

“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

“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&q=%22Of+human+work+none+but+what+is+bad+can+be+perfect+in+its+own+bad+way%22&pg=PA189#v=onepage. <br class="br">The Stones of Venice (1853)

“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

“He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.”

John Ruskin book Modern Painters

Volume I, part I, chapter II, section 9 (1843).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

“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

Pre-Raphaelitism, section 1 (1851).

“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

Lecture II, section 32.
The Eagle's Nest (1872)

“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

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

“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

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 123.

“Work first and then rest. Work first, and then gaze, but do not use golden ploughshares, nor bind ledgers in enamel.”

John Ruskin book The Seven Lamps of Architecture

Source: The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), Chapter IV: The Lamp of Beauty, section 19.

“Give an earnest-hearted, devoted 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

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 122.

“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

The Crown of Wild Olive, lecture I: Work, sections 23-24 (1866).