Quotes from John Ruskin

I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting.

Every duty we omit obscures some truth we should have known.

It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.

Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth.

Nothing can be true which is either complete or vacant; every touch is false which does not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which represents nothing.

The virtue of the imagination is its reaching, by intuition and intensity, a more essential truth than is seen at the surface of things.

Childhood often holds a truth with its feeble finger, which the grasp of manhood cannot retain,--which it is the pride of utmost age to recover.

He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.

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.

Do justice to your brother (you can do that, whether you love him or not), and you will come to love him. But do injustice to him because you don't love him, and you will come to hate him.

You will never love art well until you love what she mirrors better.

There is nothing so great or so goodly in creation, but that it is a mean symbol of the gospel of Christ, and of the things He has prepared for them that love Him.

The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as the greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.

Your art is to be the praise of something that you love. It may only be the praise of a shell or a stone.

No girl who is well bred, 'kind, and modest, is ever offensively plain; all real deformity means want of manners, or of heart.

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

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.

Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities.

It is not the church we want, but the sacrifice; not the emotion of admiration, but the act of adoration; not the gift, but the giving.

No one can do me any good by loving me I have more love than I need or could do any good with but people do me good by making me love them - which isn't easy.

God alone can finish.

All that is good in art is the expression of one soul talking to another; and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it.

The beauty of the animal form is in exact proportion to the amount of moral and intellectual virtue expressed by it.

If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.