770 Quotes by John Ruskin

If we pretend to have reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves and our work. God’s work only may express that, but ours may never have that sentence written upon it, Behold it was very good.

Imperfections have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be effort, and the law of human judgment mercy.

No one can do me any good by loving me; I have more love than I need or could do any good with; but people do me good by making me love them – which isn’t easy.

There is no music in a “rest” that I know of, but there’s the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody.

All of one’s life is music, if one touches the notes rightly, and in time.

When you pay too much, you lose a little money – that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought is incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.

That admiration of the ‘neat but not gaudy,’ which is commonly reported to have influenced the devil when he painted his tail pea green.

For certainly it is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them.

Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.