770 Quotes by John Ruskin

The spirit needs several sorts of food of which knowledge is only one.

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.

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.

The man who accepts the laissez-faire doctrine would allow his garden to grow wild so that roses might fight it out with the weeds and the fittest might survive.

Always stand by form against force.

The virtue of the imagination is its reaching, by intuition and intensity, a more essential truth than is seen at the surface of things.

Candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, the sailor perceives these decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day; and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all; and they give plenary and brief without listening to confession.

The Training which Makes Men Happiest in themselves ... also Makes Them Most Serviceable to Others

That which seems to be wealth may in verity be only the gilded index of far reaching ruin