John Ruskin

Taste . . . is the only morality. . . . Tell me what you like, and I’ll tell you what you are.

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

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

Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

Value is the life-giving power of anything; cost, the quantity of labor required to produce it; price, the quantity of labor which its possessor will take in exchange for it.

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?

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

It is only by labour that thought can be made healthy) and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity.

When the whole world turns clown, and paints itself red with its own heart’s blood instead of vermilion, it is something else than comic.

When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work, as the colour-petals out of a fruitful flower.

The scholar is early acquainted with every department of the impossible. v

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be effort, and the law of human judgment, mercy.

God alone can finish.

Education is the leading human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them; and these two objects are always attainable together, and by the same means; the training which makes men happiest in themselves also makes them most serviceable to others.

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

Civilization is the making of civil persons.

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

Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadow ceases to be enjoyed as light.

To follow art for the sake of being a great man, and therefore to cast about continually for some means of achieving position or attracting admiration, is the surest way of ending in total extinction.

An artist should be well read in the best books, and thoroughly high bred, both in heart and bearing. In a word, he should be fit for the best society, and should keep out of it.

Great art is precisely that which never was, nor will be taught, it is preeminently and finally the expression of the spirits of great men.

No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.

If the design of the building be originally bad, the only virtue it can ever possess will be signs of antiquity.

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.

Architecture is the work of nations.

What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination; and third, their industry.

All travelling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.

Our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves what shall be true for the future.

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

Why is one man richer than another? Because he is more industrious, more persevering and more sagacious.

Genius is only a superior power of seeing.

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

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

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

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces up, and snow is exhilarating; there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.