Quotes from John Ruskin

When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, 'See! This our fathers did for us.

Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are.

To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered.

Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know in life.

The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.

When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.

Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.

When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought is incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.

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

To speak and act truth with constancy and precision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps as meretorious, as to speak it under intimidation or penalty

At least be sure you go to the author to find his meaning, not to find yours.

An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.

It is far better to give work that is above a person, than to educate the person to be above their work.

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

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

To use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own, and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.

Lately in a wreck of a Californian ship, one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he was found afterwards at the bottom. Now, as he was sinking- had he the gold? or the gold him?

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

All great art is praise.

Saya yakin ujian pertama bagi orang besar adalah kerendahan hati.

To study one good master till you understand him will teach you more than a superficial acquaintance with a thousand: power of criticism does not consist in knowing the names or the manner of many painters, but in discerning the excellence of a few.

Mountains are to the rest of the body of the earth, what violent muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and tendons of its anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with force and convulsive energy, full of expression, passion, and strength.

What right have you to take the word wealth, which originally meant ''well-being,'' and degrade and narrow it by confining it to certain sorts of material objects measured by money.