Quotes by Ruskin, John

"One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live."

Ruskin, John on death
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"Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are."

Ruskin, John on desire   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Men cannot not live by exchanging articles, but producing them. They live by work not trade."

Ruskin, John on economy and economics   

"The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced."

Ruskin, John on education
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"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   

"The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work."

Ruskin, John on education   

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

Ruskin, John on egotism
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"Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it."

Ruskin, John on joy   

"Out of suffering comes the serious mind; out of salvation, the grateful heart; out of endurance, fortitude; out of deliverance faith."

Ruskin, John on faith
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"No human being, however great, or powerful, was ever so free as a fish."

Ruskin, John on fishing
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"Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor."

Ruskin, John on fortune   

"Freedom is only granted us that obedience may be more perfect."

Ruskin, John on freedom   

"Men are more evanescent than pictures, yet one sorrows for lost friends, and pictures are my friends. I have none others. I am never long enough with men to attach myself to them; and whatever feelings of attachment I have are to material things."

Ruskin, John on friends and friendship   

"You cannot get anything out of nature or from God by gambling; only out of your neighbor."

Ruskin, John on gambling   

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

Ruskin, John on giving   

"Every great man is always being helped by everybody; for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons."

Ruskin, John on aid and assistance   

"It is far better to give work that is above a person, than to educate the person to be above their work."

Ruskin, John on goals   

"A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort."

Ruskin, John on greatness   

"Life without industry is guilt. Industry without Art is Brutality."

Ruskin, John on guilt   

"It is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have... insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, can never be recalled."

Ruskin, John on heritage   

"If men lived like men indeed, their houses would be temples -- temples which we should hardly dare to injure, and in which it would make us holy to be permitted to live; and there must be a strange dissolution of natural affection, a strange unthankfulness for all that homes have given and parents taught, a strange consciousness that we have been unfaithful to our fathers honor, or that our own lives are not such as would make our dwellings sacred to our children, when each man would fain build to himself, and build for the little revolution of his own life only."

Ruskin, John on home   

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

Ruskin, John on honesty
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"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."

Ruskin, John on humankind   

"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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"It is eminently a weariable faculty, eminently delicate, and incapable of bearing fatigue; so that if we give it too many objects at a time to employ itself upon, or very grand ones for a long time together, it fails under the effort, becomes jaded, exactly as the limbs do by bodily fatigue, and incapable of answering any farther appeal till it has had rest."

Ruskin, John on imagination   

"The imagination is never governed, it is always the ruling and divine power."

Ruskin, John on imagination
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"Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them."

Ruskin, John on imagination   

"An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind."

Ruskin, John on imagination   

"Your labor only may be sold, your soul must not."

Ruskin, John on individuality
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"The great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than the furnace blast, is all in very deed for this -- that we manufacture everything there except men."

Ruskin, John on industry   

"An infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of all truly great men."

Ruskin, John on inheritance   

"Once thoroughly our own knowledge ceases to give us pleasure."

Ruskin, John on knowledge   

"It is not, truly speaking, the labor that is divided; but the men: divided into mere segments of men --broken into small fragments and crumbs of life, so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail."

Ruskin, John on labor   

"The secret of language is the secret of sympathy and its full charm is possible only to the gentle."

Ruskin, John on language   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"It takes a great deal of living to get a little deal of learning."

Ruskin, John on learning   

"How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty: most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment."

Ruskin, John on liberty   

"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   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"No lying knight or lying priest ever prospered in any age, but especially not in the dark ones. Men prospered then only in following an openly declared purpose, and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds."

Ruskin, John on lies and lying   

"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