John Ruskin Quotes - Page 20

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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

Sweet, Destiny, Wind

John Ruskin, Charles Eliot Norton, John Lewis Bradley, Ian Ousby (1987). “The Correspondence of John Ruskin and Charles Eliot Norton”, p.79, Cambridge University Press

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Without the perfect sympathy with the animals around them, no gentleman's education, no Christian education, could be of any possible use.

John Ruskin

Christian, Education, Animal

John Ruskin (19??). “Works: Deucalion. The king of the Golden River. The eagle's nest. Arrows of the chace”

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The true grotesque being the expression of the repose or play of a serious mind, there is a false grotesque opposed to it, which is the result of the full exertion of a frivolous one.

John Ruskin

Expression, Play, Mind

John Ruskin (2015). “The Stones of Venice”, p.244, John Ruskin

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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

Patience, Perseverance, Talking

John Ruskin (1905). “Sesame and Lilies; The Ethics of the Dust; The Crown of Wild Olive: With Letters on Public Affairs, 1859-1866”

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The sculptor must paint with his chisel; half his touches are not to realize, but to put power into, the form. They are touches of light and shadow, and raise a ridge, or sink a hollow, not to represent an actual ridge or hollow, but to get a line of light, or a spot of darkness.

John Ruskin

Light, Darkness, Shadow

John Ruskin (1866). “The seven lamps of architecture”, p.142

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Greatness is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but the expression of the mind of a God-made great man.

John Ruskin

Greatness, Men, Expression

John Ruskin (1868). “Selections from the Writings of John Ruskin”, p.346

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The sculptor does not work for the anatomist, but for the common observer of life and nature.

John Ruskin

Doe, Sculpture, Common

John Ruskin (1848). “Modern Painters”, p.26

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The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as the greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.

John Ruskin

Race, Effort, Praise

John Ruskin (2008). “The Lamp of Memory”, p.43, Penguin UK

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As long as there are cold and nakedness in the land around you, so long can there be no question at all but that splendor of dress is a crime. In due time, when we have nothing better to set people to work at, it may be right to let them make lace and cut jewels; but as long as there are any who have no blankets for their beds, and no rags for their bodies, so long it is blanket-making and tailoring we must set people to work at, not lace.

John Ruskin

Cutting, Jewels, Land

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Our respect for the dead, when they are just dead, is something wonderful, and the way we show it more wonderful still. We show it with black feathers and black horses; we show it with black dresses and black heraldries; we show it with costly obelisks and sculptures of sorrow, which spoil half of our beautiful cathedrals. We show it with frightful gratings and vaults, and lids of dismal stone, in the midst of the quiet grass; and last, and not least, we show it by permitting ourselves to tell any number of falsehoods we think amiable or credible in the epitaph.

John Ruskin

Beautiful, Death, Horse

John Ruskin (1902*). “Works”

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Other men used their effete faiths and mean faculties with a high moral purpose. The Venetian gave the most earnest faith, and the lordliest faculty, to gild the shadows of an antechamber, or heighten the splendours of a holiday.

John Ruskin

Holiday, Mean, Men

John Ruskin (1873). “Pt. 6-9 of leaf beauty. of cloud beauty. of ideas of relation”, p.233

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Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth. I find this more and more every day: an infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of all the truly great men. It is sure to involve a relative intensity of disdain towards base things, and an appearance of sternness and arrogance in the eyes of all hard, stupid, and vulgar people

John Ruskin

Art, Stupid, Eye

John Ruskin (1872). “The Two Paths: Being Lectures on Art, and Its Application to Decoration and Manufacture, Delivered in 1858-9”, p.38

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Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night.

John Ruskin

Honesty, Night, Light

'Time and Tide' (1867) letter 8

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We must note carefully what distinction there is between a healthy and a diseased love of change; for as it was in healthy love of change that the Gothic architecture rose, it was partly in consequence of diseased love of change that it was destroyed.

John Ruskin

Rose, Healthy, Gothic

John Ruskin (1854). “On the Nature of Gothic Architecture: And Herein of the True Functions of the Workman in Art ...”, p.16

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God has lent us the earth for our life; it is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come after us, and whose names are already written in the book of creation, as to us; and we have no right, by anything that we do or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits which it was in our power to bequeath.

John Ruskin

Book, Names, Benefits

John Ruskin (1907). “The Religion of Ruskin: The Life and Works of John Ruskin; a Biographical and Anthological Study”

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Science has to do with facts, art with phenomena. To science, phenomena are of use only as they lead to facts; and to art, facts are of use only as they lead to phenomena.

John Ruskin

Art, Science, Use

John Ruskin (1897*). “Stones of Venice”

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It is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity.

John Ruskin

Work, Two, Healthy

John Ruskin (2013). “The Stones of Venice -: The Sea Stories”, p.169, Cosimo, Inc.

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When the whole world turns clown, and paints itself red with its own hearts blood instead of vermilion, it is something else than comic.

John Ruskin

War, Heart, Blood

John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.278, University of Virginia Press

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How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty.

John Ruskin

Men, Liberty, Phantoms

John Ruskin (1861). “Selections from the writings of John Ruskin ... With a portrait”, p.334

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Temperance, in the nobler sense, does not mean a subdued and imperfect energy; it does not mean a stopping short in any good thing, as in love and in faith; but it means the power which governs the most intense energy, and prevents its acting in way but as it ought.

John Ruskin

Mean, Acting, Energy

John Ruskin (1860). “The Stones of Venice...”, p.5

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The word "Blue" does not mean the sensation caused by a gentian on the human eye; but it means the power of producing that sensation: and this power is always there, in the thing, whether we are there to experience it or not, and would remain there though there were not a man left on the face of the earth.

John Ruskin

Mean, Eye, Men

John Ruskin, Frederick William Roe (2013). “Selections and Essays”, p.115, Courier Corporation

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All true opinions are living, and show their life by being capable of nourishment; therefore of change. But their change is that of a tree not of a cloud.

John Ruskin

Clouds, Tree, Opinion

John Ruskin (1860). “Modern Painters”, p.11

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The beginning and almost the end of all good law is that everyone shall work for their bread and receive good bread for their work.

John Ruskin

Law, Charity, Bread

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No small misery is caused by overworked and unhappy people, in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of work itself.

John Ruskin

Dark, Views, People

John Ruskin (1907). “The Religion of Ruskin: The Life and Works of John Ruskin; a Biographical and Anthological Study”

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The truths of nature are one eternal change, one infinite variety. There is no bush on the face of the globe exactly like another bush; there are no two trees in the forest whose boughs bend into the same network, nor two leaves on the same tree which could not be told one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike.

John Ruskin

Nature, Sea, Two

John Ruskin (1848). “Modern Painters”, p.55

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Born: February 8, 1819
Died: January 20, 1900
Occupation: Art critic
Cite this Page: Citation

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