John Ruskin
The fact of our deriving constant pleasure from whatever is a type or semblance of divine attributes, and from nothing but that which is so, is the most glorious of all that can be demonstrated of human nature; it not only sets a great gulf of specific separation between us and the lower animals, but it seems a promise of a communion ultimately deep, close, and conscious, with the Being whose darkened manifestations we here feebly and unthinkingly delight in.Collection: Animal
Your labor only may be sold, your soul must not.Collection: Soul
It is not the weariness of mortality, but the strength of divinity, which we have to recognize in all mighty things; and that is just what we now never recognize, but think that we are to do great things by help of iron bars and perspiration. Alas! we shall do nothing that way but lose some pounds of our own weight.Collection: Power
If you want to work for the kingdom of God, and to bring it, and enter into it, there is just one condition to be first accepted. You must enter into it as children, or not at all.Collection: Children
The artist's business is to feel, although he may think a little sometimes... when he has nothing better to do.Collection: Business
Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity.Collection: Sarcastic
The virtue of the imagination is its reaching, by intuition and intensity, a more essential truth than is seen at the surface of things.Collection: Imagination
No false knight or lying priest ever prospered, I believe, in any age, but certainly not in the dark ones. Men prospered then, only in following openly-declared purposes , and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds.Collection: Love
Come, ye cold winds, at January's call, On whistling wings, and with white flakes bestrew The earth.Collection: Wind
The secret of language is the secret of sympathy, and its full charm is possible only to the gentleCollection: Sympathy
Without mountains the air could not be purified, nor the flowing of the rivers sustained.Collection: Air
Architecture is the work of nationsCollection: Architecture
And thus, in full, there are four classes: the men who feel nothing, and therefore see truly; the men who feel strongly, think weakly, and see untruly (second order of poets); the men who feel strongly, think strongly, and see truly (first order of poets); and the men who, strong as human creatures can be, are yet submitted to influences stronger than they, and see in a sort untruly, because what they see is inconceivably above them. This last is the usual condition of prophetic inspiration.Collection: Strong
The entire vitality of art depends upon its being either full of truth, or full of use; and that, however pleasant, wonderful, or impressive it may be in itself, it must yet be of inferior kind, and tend to deeper inferiority, unless it has clearly one of these main objects, either to state a true thing, or to adorn a serviceable one.Collection: Art
Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent.Collection: Progress And Change
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.Collection: Time
Freedom is only granted us that obedience may be more perfect.Collection: Freedom
Though you may have known clever men who were indolent, you never knew a great man who was so; and when I hear a young man spoken of as giving promise of great genius, the first question I ask about him always is, Does he work?Collection: Clever
If you do not wish for His kingdom do not pray for it. But if you do you must do more than pray for it, you must work for it.Collection: Work
The highest thoughts are those which are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any composition and praise to which it is entitled are in exact proportion to its dependency of language or expression.Collection: Expression
It is not, truly speaking, the labour 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.Collection: Life
No nation can last which has made a mob of itself, however generous at heart.Collection: Heart
In my house there is no attempt whatever to secure harmonies of colour, or form, or furniture.... I am entirely independent for daily happiness upon the sensual qualities of form or colour-when I want them I take them either from the sky or from the fields.Collection: Independent
A nation which lives a pastoral and innocent life never decorates the shepherd's staff or the plough-handle; but races who live by depredation and slaughter nearly always bestow exquisite ornaments on the quiver, the helmet, and the spear.Collection: Race
We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided; but the men.Collection: Men
... no human actions ever were intended by the Maker of men to be guided by balances of expediency, but by balances of justice.Collection: Men
See! This our fathers did for us.Collection: Father
The man who can see all gray, and red, and purples in a peach, will paint the peach rightly round, and rightly altogether. But the man who has only studied its roundness may not see its purples and grays, and if he does not will never get it to look like a peach; so that great power over color is always a sign of large general art-intellect.Collection: Art
Value is the life-giving power of anything; cost, the quantity of labour required to produce it; its price, the quantity of labourwhich its possessor will take in exchange for it.Collection: Giving
... Amongst all the mechanical poison that this terrible nineteenth century has poured upon men, it has given us at any rate one antidote - the Daguerreotype. (1845)Collection: Men
If there be any one principle more widely than another confessed by every utterance, or more sternly than another imprinted on every atom of the visible creation, that principle is not liberty, but law.Collection: Law
He who has learned what is commonly considered the whole art of painting, that is, the art of representing any natural object faithfully, has as yet only learned the language by which his thoughts are to be expressed.Collection: Art
That which is required in order to the attainment of accurate conclusions respecting the essence of the Beautiful is nothing morethan earnest, loving, and unselfish attention to our impressions of it.Collection: Beauty
Society has sacrificed its virtues to the Goddess of Getting Along.Collection: Goddess
Commerce is the agency by which the power of choice is obtained.Collection: Agency
Architecture concerns itself only with those characters of an edifice which are above and beyond its common use.Collection: Character
No one can explain how the notes of a Mozart melody, or the folds of a piece of Titian's drapery, produce their essential effects. If you do not feel it, no one can by reasoning make you feel it.Collection: Pieces
And with respect to the mode in which these general principles affect the secure possession of property, so far am I from invalidating such security, that the whole gist of these papers will be found ultimately to aim at an extension in its range; and 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.Collection: Long
The power of association is stronger than the power of beauty; therefore, the power of association is the power of beauty.Collection: Power
Inequalities of wealth, unjustly established, have assuredly injured the nation in which they exist during their establishment; and, unjustly directed, they injure it yet more during their existence. But inequalities of wealth justly established, benefit the nation in the course of their establishment; and, nobly used, aid it yet more by their existence.Collection: Benefits
We are only advancing in life, whose hearts are getting softer, our blood warmer, our brains quicker, and our spirits entering into living peace.Collection: Heart
Sky is the part of creation in which Nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her.Collection: Teaching
It takes a great deal of living to get a little deal of learning.Collection: Wisdom
An infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of all truly great men.Collection: Inspirational
There are, indeed, two forms of discontent: one laborious, the other indolent and complaining. We respect the man of laborious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is peace, or his ambition meekness. It is because of the special connection of meekness with contentment that it is promised that the meek shall 'inherit the earth.' Neither covetous men, nor the grave, can inherit anything; they can but consume. Only contentment can possess.Collection: Ambition
You were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased with them, or too grasping to care for what you can not turn to other account than mere delight.Collection: Fun
No architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.Collection: Design
There is no law of history any more than of a kaleidoscope.Collection: Law
The history of humanity is not the history of its wars, but the history of its households.Collection: War