770 Quotes by John Ruskin

The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.

You may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does.

The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don't mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.

Whenever I did anything wrong, stupid or hard-hearted, and I have done many things that were all three, my mother always said "it is because you were too much indulged."

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.

They are good furniture pictures, unworthy of praise, and undeserving of blame.

No amount of pay ever made a good soldier, a good teacher, a good artist, or a good workman.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.