John Ruskin
No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.
Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.
Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are.
All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.
Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.
I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this; was it done with enjoyment, was the carver happy while he was about it?
The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.
No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.
There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves.
Whether for life or death, do your own work well.
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.
No person who is well bred, kind and modest is ever offensively plain; all real deformity means want for manners or of heart.
Nearly all the powerful people of this age are unbelievers, the best of them in doubt and misery, the most in plodding hesitation, doing as well as they can, what practical work lies at hand.
Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.
To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.
Nothing is ever done beautifully which is done in rivalship: or nobly, which is done in pride.
I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting.
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.
The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.
How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?
Men cannot not live by exchanging articles, but producing them. They live by work not trade.
Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them.
You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.
A book worth reading is worth buying.
Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor.
The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it.
An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind.
It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.
Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.
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.
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.
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.
The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.
The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.
When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.
Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are.
All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.
Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.
It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately.
Cursing is invoking the assistance of a spirit to help you inflict suffering. Swearing on the other hand, is invoking, only the witness of a spirit to an statement you wish to make.
Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.
A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.
Do not think of your faults, still less of other's faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.
Civilization is the making of civil persons.
The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.
Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.