Quotes from John Ruskin

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us, snow is exhilarating; there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

There is hardly anything in the world that some man can't make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey.

Cheerfulness is as natural to the heart of man in strong health as color to his cheek; and wherever there is habitual gloom there must be either bad air, unwholesome food, improperly severe labor or erring habits of life.

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

The force of the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbour's pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you.

Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.

You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.

The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.

When men are rightfully occupied, then their amusement grows out of their work as the color petals out of a fruitful garden.

The weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him and which worthily used will be a gift also to his race.

Shadows are in reality, when the sun is shining, the most conspicuous thing in a landscape, next to the highest lights.

Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost Divine in its infinity.

Absolute and entire ugliness is rare.

When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work, as the color-petals out of a fruitful flower.

It takes a great deal of living to get a little deal of learning.

What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?

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.

Conceit may puff a man up, but never prop him up.

God will put up with a great many things in the human heart, but there is one thing that He will not put up with in it--a second place. He who offers God a second place, offers Him no place.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

Man's only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him.

Of all God's gifts to the sighted man, color is holiest, the most divine, the most solemn.

Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.

The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don't mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.