"Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them."
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Quote collection
John Ruskin quotes (page 23 of 31)
606 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
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"Every hue throughout your work is altered by every touch you add in other places."
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"Trust thou thy Love: if she be proud, is she not sweet? Trust thou thy love: if she be mute, is she not pure? Lay thou thy soul full in her hands, low at her feet- Fail, Sun and Breath!-yet, for thy peace, she shall endure."
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"They are the weakest-minded and the hardest-hearted men that most love change."
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"Give an earnest-hearted, devoted girl any true work that will make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with the consciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the better for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform itself into a majesty of radiant and beneficent peace."
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"Nothing can be true which is either complete or vacant; every touch is false which does not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which represents nothing."
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"In the range of inorganic nature. I doubt if any object can be found more perfectly beautiful than a fresh, deep snowdrift, seen under warm light."
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"In health of mind and body, men should see with their own eyes, hear and speak without trumpets, walk on their feet, not on wheels, and work and war with their arms, not with engine-beams, nor rifles warranted to kill twenty men at a shot before you can see them."
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"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."
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"Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test."
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"How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?"
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"In general, when the imagination is at all noble, it is irresistible, and therefore those who can at all resist it ought to resist it. Be a plain topographer if you possibly can; if Nature meant you to be anything else, she will force you to it; but never try to be a prophet."
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"I used to lie down on the grass and draw the blades as they grew - until every square foot of meadow, or mossy bank, became a possession to me."
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"There is nothing so great or so goodly in creation, but that it is a mean symbol of the gospel of Christ, and of the things He has prepared for them that love Him."
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"In old times men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith, in later times they use the objects of faith to show their powers of painting."
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"Wherever men are noble, they love bright colour; and wherever they can live healthily, bright colour is given them—in sky, sea, flowers, and living creatures."
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"Race is precisely of as much consequence in man as it is in any animal."
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"... A power of obtaining veracity in the representation of material and tangible things, which, within certain limits and conditions, is unimpeachable, has now been placed in the hands of all men, almost without labour. (1853)"
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"Every good piece of art... involves first essentially the evidence of human skill, and the formation of an actually beautiful thing by it."
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