Quotes from John Ruskin

It is his restraint that is honorable to a person, not their liberty.

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.

When we build, let us think that we build for ever.

Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.

Civilization is the making of civil persons.

The great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than the furnace blast, is all in very deed for this -- that we manufacture everything there except men.

The constant duty of every man to his fellows is to ascertain his own powers and special gifts, and to strengthen them for the help of others.

To yield reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at his disposal, is not slavery; often, it is the noblest state in which a man can live in this world.

Multitudes think they like to do evil; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world.

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.

It is a matter of the simplest demonstration, that no man can be really appreciated but by his equal or superior.

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

Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, that the sight of them may contribute to his mental health, power, and pleasure.

Whether we force the man's property from him by pinching his stomach, or pinching his fingers, makes some difference anatomically; morally, none whatsoever.

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

The man who accepts the laissez-faire doctrine would allow his garden to grow wild so that roses might fight it out with the weeds and the fittest might survive.

Great art is precisely that which never was, nor will be taught, it is preeminently and finally the expression of the spirits of great men.

Ship of the line is the most honourable thing that man, as a gregarious animal, has ever produced.

That man is always happy who is in the presence of something which he cannot know to the full, which he is always going on to know.

The man who says to one, go, and he goeth, and to another, come, and he cometh, has, in most cases, more sense of restraint and difficulty than the man who obeys him.

Wherever men are noble, they love bright colour; and wherever they can live healthily, bright colour is given them—in sky, sea, flowers, and living creatures.

Race is precisely of as much consequence in man as it is in any animal.

... no human actions ever were intended by the Maker of men to be guided by balances of expediency, but by balances of justice.

To watch the corn grow, and the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over ploughshare or spade; to read, to think, to love, to hope, to pray, — these are the things that make men happy.