John Ruskin Quotes

Of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, scrannel-pipiest, tongs and boniest doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliest of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest.

English artists are usually entirely ruined by residence in Italy.

Thackeray settled like a meat-fly on whatever one had got for dinner, and made one sick of it.

Engraving then, is, in brief terms, the Art of Scratch.

The first duty of a state is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed and educated, till it attain years of discretion.

Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it.

Labour without joy is base. Labour without sorrow is base. Sorrow without labour is base. Joy without labour is base.

You hear of me, among others, as a respectable architectural man-milliner; and you send for me, that I may tell you the leading fashion.

Which of us…is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest-and for what pay? Who is to do the pleasant and clean work, and for what pay?

All books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

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.

Government and co-operation are in all things the laws of life; anarchy and competition the laws of death.

Soldiers of the ploughshare as well as soldiers of the sword.

Political economy (the economy of a State, or of citizens) consists simply in the production, preservation, and distribution, at fittest time and place, of useful or pleasurable things.

The force of the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbour’s pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you.

It ought to be quite as natural and straightforward a matter for a labourer to take his pension from his parish, because he has deserved well of his parish, as for a man in higher rank to take his pension from his country, because he has deserved well of his country.

Nobody cares much at heart about Titian; only there is a strange undercurrent of everlasting murmur about his name, which means the deep consent of all great men that he is greater than they.

Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.

All things are literally better, lovelier, more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed.

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