J

John Ruskin

61 quotes

John Ruskin (1819–1900) was an English art critic, social thinker, and philanthropist whose ideas about art, architecture, and society profoundly influenced the Victorian and Edwardian eras. His passionate advocacy for beauty, craftsmanship, and social justice inspired movements ranging from the Arts and Crafts to early environmentalism.

“It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.”

— John Ruskin

Art

All Quotes by John Ruskin

“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.”

— John Ruskin

Great

“There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.”

— John Ruskin

Truth

“No human being, however great, or powerful, was ever so free as a fish.”

— John Ruskin

Great

“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.”

— John Ruskin

Age

“No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.”

— John Ruskin

Architecture

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

— John Ruskin

Work

“No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.”

— John Ruskin

Society

“Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.”

— John Ruskin

Education

“I believe the first test of a truly great man is in his humility.”

— John Ruskin

Great

“Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.”

— John Ruskin

Music

“Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them.”

— John Ruskin

Best

“Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.”

— John Ruskin

Work

“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

Happiness

“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

Art

“In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.”

— John Ruskin

Great

“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.”

— John Ruskin

Men

“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.”

— John Ruskin

Art

“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

Beauty

“Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.”

— John Ruskin

Experience

“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.”

— John Ruskin

Age