Quotes by John Ruskin

The blue colour is everlastingly appointed by the Deity to be a source of delight; and whether seen perpetually over your head, or crystallised once in a thousand years into a single and incomparable stone, your acknowledgment of its beauty is equally natural, simple, and instantaneous.

When we build let us think we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work that our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone upon stone, that a time is to come when these stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, "See! This our fathers did for us."

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others, but of the three the only trustworthy one is the last.

What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.
  - John Ruskin

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way... To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion -- all in one.

"Nature has painted for us, day after day,  pictures of infinite beauty."

Every great man is always being helped by everybody, for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.

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

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces up, snow is exhilarating; there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

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