John Ruskin Quotes

• The saying that beauty is but skin deep is but a skin deep saying.

  John Ruskin

• The persons who remain poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the idle, the reckless, the humble, the thoughtful, the dull, the imaginative, the sensitive, the well-informed, the improvident, the irregularly and impulsively wicked, the clu.

  John Ruskin

• Great art is precisely that which never was, nor will be taught, it is preeminently and finally the expression of the spirits of great men.

  John Ruskin

  Topics in Art

• It is better to be nobly remembered than nobly born.

  John Ruskin

• No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

  John Ruskin

  Topics in Art

• It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all that he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his readers is sure to skip them.

  John Ruskin

• 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.

  John Ruskin

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

  John Ruskin

• The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.

  John Ruskin

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

  John Ruskin

• An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind.

  John Ruskin

• It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately.

  John Ruskin

• The beginning and almost the end of all good law is that everyone shall work for their bread and receive good bread for their work.

  John Ruskin

  Topics in Work

• It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.

  John Ruskin

• 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.

  John Ruskin

• No person who is well bred, kind and modest is ever offensively plain; all real deformity means want for manners or of heart.

  John Ruskin

• The sky is the part of creation in which nature has done for the sake of pleasing man.

  John Ruskin

• How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty: most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment.

  John Ruskin

• The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.

  John Ruskin

• One of the prevailing sources of misery and crime is in the generally accepted assumption, that because things have been wrong a long time, it is impossible they will ever be right.

  John Ruskin

John Ruskin (207)

Birth:	8th February, 1819
Death:	20th January, 1900
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Critic, Painter, Writer

About

John Ruskin was born in London, England. He was an English art critic, writer and painter. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy. He studied at Christ Church, Oxford University. He served as Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. His art works shown below: Bernese Oberland, The Garden of San Miniato near Florence, Tower of the Cathedral at Sens, Bellizona, Dawn, Coniston, and Tree Study. He wrote several books include: Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, Pre-Raphaelitism, The Stones of Venice, Political Economy of Art, Unto This Last, and Time and Tide.

Related Authors

• John Peter Berger
• Giovanni Papini
• Theophile Gautier
• Jerry Saltz
• Ronnie Barker
• Mark Van Doren
• Ken Auletta
• Orson Scott Card
• Chinua Achebe
• Michelene Wandor

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 8th January

Births

• 1891 - Storm Jameson
• 1904 - Peter Arno
• 1891 - Walther Bothe
• 1944 - Terry Brooks

Deaths

• 1950 - Joseph A. Schumpeter
• 1976 - Zhou Enlai
• 1998 - Michael Tippett
• 1896 - Paul Verlaine