John Ruskin Quotes

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

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

You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.

Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night.

Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.

Men don't and can't live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don't live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of Labourers' Unions.

Human work must be done honourably and thoroughly, because we are now Men;Mwhether we ever expect to be angels, or were ever slugs, being practically no matter.

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

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.

I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.