Quotes by John Ruskin

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

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.

The weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him and which worthily used will be a gift also to his race.

Men are more evanescent than pictures, yet one sorrows for lost friends, and pictures are my friends. I have none others. I am never long enough with men to attach myself to them; and whatever feelings of attachment I have are to material things.

No human being, however great, or powerful, was ever so free as a fish.