Top 100 Ruskin's Quotes
#1. Ruskin's concern for art education applied to the development of the power of the hand and eye for everyone.
Robert Hewison
#2. Ninety per cent of the theory of Impressionist painting is in ... Ruskin's Elements.
Claude Monet
#3. Everyone says she's mad.'
'How do they know?' I asked.
'Because she's different from other people, I suppose.'
'Is that being mad?'
'No. Not really, I suppose madness is not seeing things as others see them.
Ruskin Bond
#4. Levi's station in life was the receipt of custom; and Peter's, the shore of Galilee; and Paul's, the antechambers of the High- Priest, which "station in life" each had to leave, with brief notice.
John Ruskin
#5. Without the perfect sympathy with the animals around them, no gentleman's education, no Christian education, could be of any possible use.
John Ruskin
#6. The only absolutely and unapproachably heroic element in the soldier's work seems to be-that he is paid little for it-and regularly.
John Ruskin
#7. But men are cutting down the trees without replacing them. For every tree that's felled, we must plant two. Otherwise, one day there'll be no forests at all, and the world will become one great desert.
Ruskin Bond
#8. The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
John Ruskin
#9. Of all God's gifts to the sighted man, color is holiest, the most divine, the most solemn.
John Ruskin
#10. The actual flower is the plant's highest fulfilment, and are not here exclusively for herbaria, county floras and plant geography: they are here first of all for delight.
John Ruskin
#11. It's courage, not luck, that takes us through to the end of the road.
Ruskin Bond
#12. Come, ye cold winds, at January's call, On whistling wings, and with white flakes bestrew The earth.
John Ruskin
#13. If we pretend to have reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves and our work. God's work only may express that, but ours may never have that sentence written upon it, Behold it was very good.
John Ruskin
#14. The common highwayman's demand of "your money OR your life," into that of "your money AND your life.
John Ruskin
#15. All great art is the expression of man's delight in God's work, not his own.
John Ruskin
#16. When the whistling-thrush released
A deep sweet secret on the trembling air;
Blackbird on the wing, bird of the forest shadows,
Black rose in the long ago summer,
This was your song:
It isn't time that's passing by,
It is you and I.
Ruskin Bond
#17. You cannot have good architecture merely by asking people's advice on occasion. All good architecture is the expression of national life and character; and it is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for beauty.
John Ruskin
#18. 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
#19. When I have been unhappy, I have heard an opera ... and it seemed the shrieking of winds; when I am happy, a sparrow's chirp is delicious to me. But it is not the chirp that makes me happy, but I that make it sweet.
John Ruskin
#20. I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.
John Ruskin
#21. A gentleman's first characteristic is that fineness of structure in the body which renders it capable of the most delicate sensation; and of structure in the mind which renders it capable of the most delicate sympathies; one may say simply fineness of nature.
John Ruskin
#22. Disorder in a drawing-room is vulgar; in an antiquary's study, not; the black battle-stain on a soldier's face is not vulgar, but the dirty face of a housemaid is.
John Ruskin
#23. When we are young, we can put up with a great deal of discomfort in order to follow a dream. If, after thirty-five years, I'm still doing my own thing, it's because I haven't forgotten the dream. Let no man take your dream away. It will sustain you to the end.
Ruskin Bond
#24. No one can explain how the notes of a Mozart melody, or the folds of a piece of Titian's drapery, produce their essential effects. If you do not feel it, no one can by reasoning make you feel it.
John Ruskin
#25. When men do not love their hearth, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have dishonoured both ... Our God is a house-hold God, as well as a heavenly one; He has an altar in every man's dwelling.
John Ruskin
#26. The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.
John Ruskin
#27. Man's only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him. Reverence something to be worshipped by him, and love something to be cherished by him, forever.
John Ruskin
#28. The artist's business is to feel, although he may think a little sometimes ... when he has nothing better to do.
John Ruskin
#29. When I'm writing there's nobody watching me. Today, it's hard to find a profession where you're not being watched!
Ruskin Bond
#30. The pure, the bright, the beautiful, That stirred our hearts in youth, The impulse to a wordless prayer, The dreams of love and truth; The longings after something lost, The spirit's yearning cry, The striving after better hopes ... These things can never die.
Ruskin Bond
#31. She knew that Grandmother was no longer with them. The dazed look in the old man's eyes told her as much. She wanted to cry - not for Grandmother, who could suffer no more, but for Grandfather, who looked so helpless and bewildered; she did not want him to be unhappy.
Ruskin Bond
#32. My mother's influence in molding my character was conspicuous. She forced me to learn daily long chapters of the Bible by heart. To that discipline and patient, accurate resolve I owe not only much of my general power of taking pains, but of the best part of my taste for literature.
John Ruskin
#33. Whether we force the man's property from him by pinching his stomach, or pinching his fingers, makes some difference anatomically; morally, none whatsoever.
John Ruskin
#34. Enough for me that you are beautiful: Beauty possessed diminishes. Better a dream of love Than love's dream broken; Better a look exchanged Than love's word spoken. Enough for me that you walk past, A firefly flashing in the dark.
Ruskin Bond
#35. Men are merely on a lower or higher stage of an eminence, whose summit is God's throne infinitely above all; and there is just as much reason for the wisest as for the simplest man being discontent with his position, as respects the real quantity of knowledge he possesses.
John Ruskin
#36. The adventure is not in arriving, it's in the on-the-way experience. It is not in the expected; it's in the surprise. You
Ruskin Bond
#37. Almost always, it's the unexpected that delights us, that takes us by the throat and gives us a good shaking, leaving us gaping in wonder.
Ruskin Bond
#38. Good omelettes are still hard to come by. They shouldn't be made in a hurried or slapdash manner. Some thought has to go into an omelette. And a little love too. It's like writing a book - done much better with some feeling!
Ruskin Bond
#39. All of one's life is music, if one touches the notes rightly, and in time.
John Ruskin
#40. I believe that mountains do affect one's personality, if one can remain among them long enough; and if Sunil had grown up in the hills instead of in a refugee township, I have no doubt he would have been a completely different person.
Ruskin Bond
#41. There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey.
John Ruskin
#42. Early in the morning Rikki-tikki came to early breakfast in the veranda riding on Teddy's shoulder,
Ruskin Bond
#43. There is in every animal's eye a dim image and gleam of humanity, a flash of strange light through which their life looks out and up to our great mystery of command over them, and claims the fellowship of the creature if not of the soul.
John Ruskin
#44. 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.
John Ruskin
#45. A nation which lives a pastoral and innocent life never decorates the shepherd's staff or the plough-handle; but races who live by depredation and slaughter nearly always bestow exquisite ornaments on the quiver, the helmet, and the spear.
John Ruskin
#46. I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to last, and built to be lovely; as rich and full of pleasantness as may be within and without: ... with such differences as might suit and express each man's character and occupation, and partly his history.
John Ruskin
#47. Those who do not read are the unfortunate ones. There's nothing wrong with them, but they are missing out on one of life's compensations and rewards.
Ruskin Bond
#48. There is no music in a "rest" that I know of, but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody.
John Ruskin
#49. All of us need just one good accomplishment in order to get by. Obviously he can't spend the rest of his life climbing trees, but it's the agility and enterprise involved in the act that will make him a survivor. Enough
Ruskin Bond
#50. The measure of any great civilization is its cities and a measure of a city's greatness is to be found in the quality of its public spaces, its parks and squares.
John Ruskin
#51. Hitler's signature is ugly, as you would expect.
Ruskin Bond
#52. Reading and writing are not education if they do not help people to be kind to all creatures
John Ruskin
#53. Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.
John Ruskin
#54. The tree made it's first move, the first overture of friendship. It allowed a leaf to fall.
Ruskin Bond
#55. 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
#56. To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered.
John Ruskin
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.
John Ruskin
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty if only we have the eyes to see them.
John Ruskin
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hours, and the books of all Time.
John Ruskin
#69. 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
#70. If the thing is impossible, you need not trouble yourselves about it; if possible, try for it.
John Ruskin
#71. PAINT the leaves as they grow! If you can paint one leaf, you can paint the world,' John Ruskin
John Ruskin
#72. 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
#73. That man is strongest who stands alone!
Ruskin Bond
#74. 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
#75. Some people become an integral part of our lives; others are ships that pass in the night. Short stories, in fact. My
Ruskin Bond
#76. 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
#77. A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.
John Ruskin
#78. There's no music in rest, but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody, always talking of perseverance and courage and fortitude; but patience is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude, and the rarest, too.
John Ruskin
#79. There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey.
John Ruskin
#80. It isn't time that's passing by, it is you and I. It
Ruskin Bond
#81. Listen to the night wind in the trees, Listen to the summer grass singing; Listen to the time that's tripping by, And the dawn dew falling. Listen to the moon as it climbs the sky, Listen to the pebbles humming; Listen to the mist in the trembling leaves, And the silence calling.
Ruskin Bond
#82. But my animals are real animals, and they behave as animals usually do. It's really the humans who do strange things. Animals are predictable. Humans, never.
Ruskin Bond
#83. Crows are the world's great survivors. They are capable of living at any height and in any climate; as much at home in the back streets of Delhi as on the heights of Tungnath. Another
Ruskin Bond
#84. The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.
John Ruskin
#85. 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
#86. 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
#87. There are no laws by which we can write Iliads.
John Ruskin
#88. 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
#89. The proof of a thing's being right is that it has power over the heart; that it excites us, wins us, or helps us.
John Ruskin
#90. Milton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak.
John Ruskin
#91. Curiosity is a gift, a capacity of pleasure in knowing, which if you destroy, you make yourself cold and dull.
John Ruskin
#92. The power of association is stronger than the power of beauty; therefore, the power of association is the power of beauty.
John Ruskin
#93. 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
#94. 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
#95. 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
#97. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions.
John Ruskin
#98. Whether for life or death, do your own work well.
John Ruskin
#99. 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
#100. 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
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