Top 100 Ruskin Quotes
#1. PAINT the leaves as they grow! If you can paint one leaf, you can paint the world,' John Ruskin
John Ruskin
#2. What would it be like to live one whole day as a Ruskin sentence, wandering like a creek with little comma bridges?
Mary Oliver
#3. [ ... ] what Ruskin judged to be the twin purposes of art: to make sense of pain and to fathom the sources of beauty.
Alain De Botton
#4. Ninety per cent of the theory of Impressionist painting is in ... Ruskin's Elements.
Claude Monet
#5. Fred Ruskin barreled through the rain down Buchanan Street in his battered Pacer, the jar his dead wife had directed him to retrieve from his nephew's coffin bouncing in the seat beside him.
Joe DeRouen
#6. It was a symbol of what Ruskin had done for Proust, and what all books might do for their readers, namely bring back to life, from the deadness caused by habit and inattention, valuable yet neglected aspects of experience.
Alain De Botton
#7. I can remember wondering as a child if I were a young Macaulay or Ruskin and secretly deciding that I was. My infant mind even was bitter with those who insisted on regarding me as a normal child and not as a prodigy.
W.N.P. Barbellion
#8. Ruskin believed that everyone had visual as well as verbal capacities that needed to be developed in order to become a complete human being, and that the apprehension of truth depended on the power of observation.
Robert Hewison
#9. Ruskin's concern for art education applied to the development of the power of the hand and eye for everyone.
Robert Hewison
#10. I doubt that art needed Ruskin any more than a moving train needs one of its passengers to shove it.
Tom Stoppard
#11. There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.' Ruskin
Michael Oakeshott
#12. I agree that Ruskin has done much harm to counter balance much good in giving people the trick of talking about Art instead of really doing a little of it to enable them to understand.
William H. Hunt
#13. As in the instances of alchemy, astrology, witchcraft, and other such popular creeds, political economy, has a plausible idea at the root of it.
John Ruskin
#14. Some people become an integral part of our lives; others are ships that pass in the night. Short stories, in fact. My
Ruskin Bond
#15. No one can ask honestly or hopefully to be delivered from temptation unless he has himself honestly and firmly determined to do the best he can to keep out of it.
John Ruskin
#16. That man is strongest who stands alone!
Ruskin Bond
#17. It is supposed to be in very bad taste to discuss a person behind his back; and to discuss a dead person behind his back is most unfair, for he cannot even retaliate.
Ruskin Bond
#18. If the thing is impossible, you need not trouble yourselves about it; if possible, try for it.
John Ruskin
#19. He who has learned what is commonly considered the whole art of painting, that is, the art of representing any natural object faithfully, has as yet only learned the language by which his thoughts are to be expressed.
John Ruskin
#20. All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hours, and the books of all Time.
John Ruskin
#21. It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.
John Ruskin
#22. The finer the nature, the more flaws it will show through the clearness of it; and it is a law of this universe that the best things shall be seldomest seen in their best form.
John Ruskin
#23. Reading and writing are not education if they do not help people to be kind to all creatures
John Ruskin
#24. Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty if only we have the eyes to see them.
John Ruskin
#25. Expression, sentiment, truth to nature, are essential: but all those are not enough. I never care to look at a picture again, if it be ill composed; and if well composed I can hardly leave off looking at it.
John Ruskin
#26. No human actions ever were intended by the Maker of men to be guided by balances of expediency, but by balances of justice.
John Ruskin
#27. God will put up with a great many things in the human heart, but there is one thing that He will not put up with in it
a second place. He who offers God a second place, offers Him no place.
John Ruskin
#28. Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.
John Ruskin
#29. All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.
John Ruskin
#30. God is a kind Father. He sets us all in the places where he wishes us to be employed. 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.
John Ruskin
#31. I am a storyteller from a personal viewpoint. When I run out of people I invent ghosts. I don't believe in ghosts. Never saw one.
Ruskin Bond
#32. To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered.
John Ruskin
#33. And the earth itself. It smells different in different places. But its loveliest fragrance is known only when it receives a shower of rain. and then the scent of the wet earth rises as though it would give something beautiful back to the clouds. A blend of all the fragrant things that grow upon it.
Ruskin Bond
#34. The tree made it's first move, the first overture of friendship. It allowed a leaf to fall.
Ruskin Bond
#35. Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.
John Ruskin
#36. Begum Para, did I say? Not the Begum Para? The saucy heroine of the silver screen? And why not? This remarkable lady had dropped in from Pakistan to play the part of my grandmother in Shubhadarshini's serial Ek Tha Rusty, based on stores of my childhood.
Ruskin Bond
#37. In the range of inorganic nature. I doubt if any object can be found more perfectly beautiful than a fresh, deep snowdrift, seen under warm light.
John Ruskin
#38. One evening, when I was yet in my nurse's arms, I wanted to touch the tea urn, which was boiling merrily ... My nurse would have taken me away from the urn, but my mother said "Let him touch it." So I touched it - and that was my first lesson in the meaning of liberty.
John Ruskin
#39. Whether for life or death, do your own work well.
John Ruskin
#40. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions.
John Ruskin
#42. What do you suppose makes all men look back to the time of childhood with so much regret (if their childhood has been, in any moderate degree, healthy or peaceful)? That rich charm, which the least possession had for us, was in consequence of the poorness of our treasures.
John Ruskin
#43. In one point of view, Gothic is not only the best, but the only rational architecture, as being that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble.
John Ruskin
#44. Humanity and Immortality consist neither in reason, nor in love; not in the body, nor in the animation of the heart of it, nor in the thoughts and stirrings of the brain of it;
but in the dedication of them all to Him who will raise them up at the last day.
John Ruskin
#45. The power of association is stronger than the power of beauty; therefore, the power of association is the power of beauty.
John Ruskin
#46. Curiosity is a gift, a capacity of pleasure in knowing, which if you destroy, you make yourself cold and dull.
John Ruskin
#47. Milton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak.
John Ruskin
#48. A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.
John Ruskin
#49. 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.
John Ruskin
#50. There are no laws by which we can write Iliads.
John Ruskin
#51. 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
#52. A Quiet Mind Lord, give me a quiet mind, That I might listen; A gentle tone of voice, That I might comfort others; A sound and healthy body, That I might share In the joy of walking And leaping and running; And a good sense of direction So I might know just where I'm going!
Ruskin Bond
#53. * The blackest cloud I've ever seen squatted over Mussoorie, and then it hailed marbles for half an hour. Nothing like a hailstorm to clear the sky . Even as I write, I see a rainbow forming.
Ruskin Bond
#54. For the most time I've followed instinct rather than intelligence, and this has resulted in a modicum of happiness.
Ruskin Bond
#55. Let every dawn of the morning be to you as the beginning of life. And let every setting of the sun be to you as its close. Then let everyone of these short lives leave its sure record of some kindly thing done for others; some good strength of knowledge gained for yourself.
John Ruskin
#56. Nothing can be true which is either complete or vacant; every touch is false which does not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which represents nothing.
John Ruskin
#57. Sky is the part of creation in which Nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her.
John Ruskin
#58. A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel.
John Ruskin
#59. The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.
John Ruskin
#60. The other day a young Internet surfer asked me why I preferred using a pencil instead of a computer. The principal reason, I told him, was that I liked chewing on the end of my pencil. A nasty habit, but it helps me concentrate. And I find it extremely difficult to chew on a computer.
Ruskin Bond
#61. Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer.
John Ruskin
#62. Variety is a positive requisite even in the character of our food.
John Ruskin
#63. Yes, I'd love to have a garden of my own
spacious, and full of everything that is fragrant and flowering. But if I don't succeed, never mind
I've still got the dream.
Ruskin Bond
#64. We have seen when the earth had to be prepared for the habitation of man, a veil, as it were, of intermediate being was spread between him and its darkness, in which were joined in a subdued measure, the stability and insensibility of the earth, and the passion and perishing of mankind.
John Ruskin
#65. So on we tramped, three small dots on a big mountain, mere specks, beings of no importance. In creating this world, God showed that he was a great mathematician; but in creating man, he got his algebra wrong. Puffed up with self-importance, we are in fact the most dispensable of all his creatures.
Ruskin Bond
#66. He thinks by infection, catching an opinion like a cold.
John Ruskin
#67. I am far more provoked at being thought foolish by foolish people, than pleased at being thought sensible by sensible people; and the average proportion of the numbers of each is not to my advantage.
John Ruskin
#68. Greatness is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but the expression of the mind of a God-made great man.
John Ruskin
#69. I know well that happiness is in little things.
John Ruskin
#70. What is in reality cowardice and faithlessness, we call charity, and consider it the part of benevolence sometimes to forgive men's evil practice for the sake of their accurate faith, and sometimes to forgive their confessed heresy for the sake of their admirable practice.
John Ruskin
#71. If you do not wish for His kingdom, don't pray for it. But if you do, you must do more than pray for it, you must work for it.
John Ruskin
#72. All great song, from the first day when human lips contrived syllables, has been sincere song.
John Ruskin
#73. A man is known to his dog by the smell, to his tailor by the coat, to his friend by the smile; each of these know him, but how little or how much depends on the dignity of the intelligence. That which is truly and indeed characteristic of the man is known only to God.
John Ruskin
#74. Your labor only may be sold, your soul must not.
John Ruskin
#76. How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?
John Ruskin
#77. It does not much matter that an individual loses two or three hundred pounds in buying a bad picture, but it is to be regretted that a nation should lose two or three hundred thousand in raising a ridiculous building.
John Ruskin
#78. Strange, how lovers cannot bear that the world should not know their love
Ruskin Bond
#79. There is nothing so great or so goodly in creation, but that it is a mean symbol of the gospel of Christ, and of the things He has prepared for them that love Him.
John Ruskin
#81. The imagination is never governed, it is always the ruling and divine power.
John Ruskin
#82. Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.
John Ruskin
#83. Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless.
John Ruskin
#84. Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.
John Ruskin
#85. He who has truth at his heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue.
John Ruskin
#86. If a great thing can be done, it can be done easily, but this ease is like the of ease of a tree blossoming after long years of gathering strength.
John Ruskin
#87. It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.
John Ruskin
#88. Science lives only in quiet places, and with odd people, mostly poor.
John Ruskin
#89. Ornamentation is the principal part of architecture, considered as a subject of fine art.
John Ruskin
#90. We must move on, of course. There's no point in hankering after distant pleasures and lost picture palaces. But there's no harm in indulging in a little nostalgia. What is nostalgia, after all, but an attempt to preserve that which was good in the past? And
Ruskin Bond
#91. We shall be led as much to the street and the cottage as to the temple and the tower; and shall be more interested in buildings raised by feeling,
John Ruskin
#92. It is far better to give work that is above a person, than to educate the person to be above their work.
John Ruskin
#94. Kind hearts are the garden, kind thoughts are the roots, kind words are the blossoms, kind deeds are the fruit.
John Ruskin
#95. There is no harm in anybody thinking that Christ is in bread. The harm is in the expectation of His presence in gunpowder.
John Ruskin
#96. Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know in life.
John Ruskin
#97. When I have sung my songs to you, I'll sing no more,' goes the old ballad. But for one faithful listener, Nelson Eddy is still singing.
Ruskin Bond
#98. All men who have sense and feeling are being continually helped; they are taught by every person they meet, and enriched by everything that falls in their way. The greatest, is he who has been oftenest aided. Originality is the observing eye.
John Ruskin
#99. Cookery means ... English thoroughness, French art, and Arabian hospitality; it means the knowledge of all fruits and herbs and balms and spices; it means carefulness, inventiveness, and watchfulness.
John Ruskin
#100. The truth of Nature is a part of the truth of God; to him who does not search it out, darkness; to him who does, infinity.
John Ruskin
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