Absolute and entire ugliness is rare.

— John Ruskin

A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.

— John Ruskin

All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.

— John Ruskin

All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hours, and the books of all Time.

— John Ruskin

All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.

— John Ruskin

All that is good at art is the expression of one soul talking to another and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it.

— John Ruskin

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel.

— John Ruskin

And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cogwheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must humanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves.... On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Outcome all his roughness; all his dullness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but outcomes the whole majesty of him also, and we know the height of it only, when we see the clouds settling upon him.

— John Ruskin

And whether consciously or not, you must be in many a heart enthroned: queens you must always be: queens to your lovers; queens to your husbands and sons; queens of higher mystery to the world beyond, which bows itself, and will forever bow, before the myrtle crown, and the stainless scepter of womanhood.

— John Ruskin

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

— John Ruskin