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John Ruskin Quotes

John Ruskin

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We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Architecture
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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.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Relationship
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Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Brainy
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When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Success
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The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world... to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Poetry
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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
Collection: Great
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Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Patience
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It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Architecture
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Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Experience
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Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Art
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The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Education
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Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Good
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Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Inspirational
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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.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Happiness
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No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Architecture
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Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Art
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It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Nature
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He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Anger
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In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Great
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The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Education
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Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Great
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Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Music
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I believe the first test of a truly great man is in his humility.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Great
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The sky is the part of creation in which nature has done for the sake of pleasing man.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Nature
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Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Beauty
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To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Poetry
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There is no wealth but life.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Life
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The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Science
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The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Strength
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A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Money
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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.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Architecture
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A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Great
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In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Success
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To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Education
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You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Peace
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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.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Education
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No human being, however great, or powerful, was ever so free as a fish.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Great
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There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
- John Ruskin
Collection: Good
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Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.
- John Ruskin
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That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.
- John Ruskin
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It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.
- John Ruskin
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When we build, let us think that we build for ever.
- John Ruskin
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All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.
- John Ruskin
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No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.
- John Ruskin
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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
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One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.
- John Ruskin
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Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.
- John Ruskin
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Modern travelling is not travelling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.
- John Ruskin
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He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.
- John Ruskin
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Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.
- John Ruskin

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