"A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it."

Ruskin, John on cost   

"It is advisable that a person know at least three things, where they are, where they are going, and what they had best do under the circumstances."

Ruskin, John on life   

"What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?"

Ruskin, John on libraries   

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"The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don't mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do."

Ruskin, John on humility
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"You may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does."

Ruskin, John on girls
3 fans of this quote   

"When a man is wrapped up in himself he makes a pretty small package."

Ruskin, John on egotism
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"The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work."

Ruskin, John on education   

"Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs."

Ruskin, John on education   

"I look upon those pitiful concretions of lime and clay which spring up, in mildewed forwardness, out of the kneaded fields about our capital... not merely with the careless disgust of an offended eye, not merely with sorrow for a desecrated landscape, but with a painful foreboding that the roots of our national greatness must be deeply cankered when they are thus loosely struck in their native ground. The crowded tenements of a struggling and restless population differ only from the tents of the Arab or the Gipsy by their less healthy openness to the air of heaven, and less happy choice of their spot of earth; by their sacrifice of liberty without the gain of rest, and of stability without the luxury of change."

Ruskin, John on life   

"What right have you to take the word wealth, which originally meant well-being, and degrade and narrow it by confining it to certain sorts of material objects measured by money."

Ruskin, John on wealth   

"Men don't and can't live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don't live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of laborers Unions."

Ruskin, John on trade unions   

"No one can become rich by the efforts of only their toil, but only by the discovery of some method of taxing the labor of others."

Ruskin, John on taxes and taxation   

"People cannot live by lending money to one another."

Ruskin, John on borrowing   

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

Ruskin, John on books - reading
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"You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement."

Ruskin, John on books - reading
3 fans of this quote   

"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."

Ruskin, John on art   

"My other piece of advice, Copperfield, said Mr. Micawber, you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, andand, in short, you are for ever floored. As I am!"

Dickens, Charles on uncategorised