John Ruskin Quotes

Poetry is the suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions.

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, and thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophesy and religion all in one.

It is a shallow criticism that would define poetry as confined to literary productions in rhyme and meter. The written poem is only poetry talking, and the statue, the picture, and the musical composition are poetry acting. Milton and Goethe, at their desks, were not more truly poets than Phidias with his chisel, Raphael at […]

No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.

Our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves what shall be true for the future.

He who can take no great interest in what is small will take false interest in what is great.

It is better to be nobly remembered than nobly born.

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies, for example.

Of all the things that oppress me, this sense of the evil working of nature herself – my disgust at her barbarity – clumsiness – darkness – bitter mockery of herself – is the most desolating.