Quotes from John Ruskin

You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil.

People are always expecting to get peace in heaven: but you know whatever peace they get there will be ready-made. Whatever making of peace they can be blest for, must be on the earth here.

What is poetry? The suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions.

Milton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

It is written on the arched sky it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.

Production does not consist in things laboriously made, but in things serviceably consumable; and the question for the nation is not how much labour it employs, but how much life it produces.

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

Variety is a positive requisite even in the character of our food.

Dream lofty dreams and as you dream so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall at last unveil.

God gives us always strength enough, and sense enough, for what He wants us to do; if we either tire ourselves or puzzle ourselves, it is our own fault.

He who offers God a second place offers Him no place.

You cannot get anything out of nature or from God by gambling; only out of your neighbor.

Not without design does God write the music of our lives.

Know thyself, for through thyself only thou canst know God.

When God shuts a door, He opens a window.

The infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable; not concealed, but incomprehensible; it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure unsearchable sea.

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

We may, without offending any laws of good taste, require of an architect, as we do of a novelist, that he should be not only correct, but entertaining.

No picture can be good which deceives by its imitation, for the very reason that nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.

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

All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.