"Disorder in a drawing-room is vulgar; in an antiquary's study, not; the black battle-stain on a soldier's face is not vulgar, but the dirty face of a housemaid is."
Read quote
3 likes
Quote collection
John Ruskin quotes (page 22 of 31)
606 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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"
Read quote
3 likes
"It is far better to give work that is above a person, than to educate the person to be above their work."
Read quote
3 likes
"When God shuts a door, He opens a window."
Read quote
3 likes
"It is eminently a weariable faculty, eminently delicate, and incapable of bearing fatigue; so that if we give it too many objects at a time to employ itself upon, or very grand ones for a long time together, it fails under the effort, becomes jaded, exactly as the limbs do by bodily fatigue, and incapable of answering any farther appeal till it has had rest."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"My entire delight was in observing without being myself noticed,- if I could have been invisible, all the better. . . to be in the midst of it, and rejoice and wonder at it, and help it if I could, - happier if it needed no help of mine, - this was the essential love of Nature in me, this the root of all that I have usefully become, and the light of all that I have rightly learned."
Read quote
3 likes
"To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance."
Read quote
3 likes
"Curiosity is a gift, a capacity of pleasure in knowing, which if you destroy, you make yourself cold and dull."
Read quote
3 likes
"You will never love art well until you love what she mirrors better."
Read quote
3 likes
"It is among children only, and as children only, that you will find medicine for your healing and true wisdom for your teaching."
Read quote
3 likes
"An unimaginative person can neither be reverent nor kind."
Read quote
3 likes
"Life is a magic vase filled to the brim, so made that you cannot dip from it nor draw from it; but it overflows into the hand that drops treasures into it. Drop in malice and it overflows hate; drop in charity and it overflows love."
Read quote
3 likes
"All of one's life is music, if one touches the notes rightly, and in time."
Read quote
3 likes
"The truth of Nature is a part of the truth of God; to him who does not search it out, darkness; to him who does, infinity."
Read quote
3 likes
"Milton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak."
Read quote
3 likes
"Of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave."
Read quote
3 likes
"Science lives only in quiet places, and with odd people, mostly poor."
Read quote
3 likes
"Expression, sentiment, truth to nature, are essential: but all those are not enough. I never care to look at a picture again, if it be ill composed; and if well composed I can hardly leave off looking at it."
Read quote
3 likes
"You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement."
Read quote
3 likes