John Ruskin: Working

John Ruskin was English writer and art critic. Explore interesting quotes on working.
John Ruskin: 266   quotes 33   likes

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

John Ruskin

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.

Men

“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
People , Sense , Success , Happiness

“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.

God , Children

“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.

Nature , Falseness

“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".

This is actually from Put Yourself in His Place by Charles Reade.
Misattributed

Success , Love

“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
Pain , Education

“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.
The Stones of Venice (1853)

Way , Perfection

“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

Question , Problem

“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)

Idea

“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).

People

“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)

Life , Men , School , Art

“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

Light , Teachers , Time , Parting

“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.

God , Business , Sense , Happiness

“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.

Peace , Girl , Heart , Night

“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).

Money , People , Game

“The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.”

John Ruskin book The Stones of Venice

Volume III
The Stones of Venice (1853)

Appearance , Science

“"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

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 405.

Men , Thinking , Christ , Parting

“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 book Fors Clavigera

Fors Clavigera, letter lxxvi (4 March 1877).
Fors Clavigera (1871-1878 and 1880-1884)

Men , Angels

“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 book The Stones of Venice

Volume II, chapter VI, section 12
The Stones of Venice (1853)

Imagination , Perfection , Thinking , Making love