770 Quotes by John Ruskin

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

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

You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil.

Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.

There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.

The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.

Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it.