Quotes from John Ruskin

Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.

How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?

Nothing is ever done beautifully which is done in rivalship: or nobly, which is done in pride.

Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are.

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

Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

Society has sacrificed its virtues to the Goddess of Getting Along.

Fit yourself for the best society, and then, never enter it.

An artist should be well read in the best books, and thoroughly high bred, both in heart and bearing. In a word, he should be fit for the best society, and should keef out of it.

In the utmost solitudes of nature, the existence of hell seems to me as legibly declared by a thousand spiritual utterances as that of heaven.

All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be effort, and the law of human judgment, mercy.

The best thing in life aren't things.

It is advisable that a person know at least three things, where they are, where they are going, and what they had best do under the circumstances.

Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality.

Government and cooperation are in all things the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, the laws of death.

Mighty of heart, mighty of mind, magnanimous-to be this is indeed to be great in life.

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light.

In painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter your manner.

Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.

There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves.

The secret of language is the secret of sympathy, and its full charm is possible only to the gentle

Without the perfect sympathy with the animals around them, no gentleman's education, no Christian education, could be of any possible use.

Death is not a journey into an unknown land; it is a voyage home. We are going, not to a strange country, but to our fathers house.