I believe the first test of a truly great man is in his humility.

— John Ruskin

If a book is worth reading it is worth buying.

— John Ruskin

If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses

— John Ruskin

I know well that happiness is in little things.

— John Ruskin

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.

— John Ruskin

It does not much matter that an individual loses two or three hundred pounds in buying a bad picture, but it is to be regretted that a nation should lose two or three hundred thousand in raising a ridiculous building.

— John Ruskin

It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.

— John Ruskin

It is evident that the chief feeling induced by woody country is one of reverence for its antiquity. There is a quiet melancholy about the decay of the patriarchal trunks, which is enhanced by the green and elastic vigor of the young saplings; the noble form of the forest aisles, and the subdued light which penetrates their entangled boughs, combine to add to the impression; and the whole character of the scene is calculated to excite conservative feeling. The man who could remain a radical in a wood country is a disgrace to his species.

— John Ruskin

It is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, can never be recalled.

— John Ruskin

It is written on the arched sky it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.

— John Ruskin