It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.

— John Ruskin

It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you Payton little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.

— John Ruskin

Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.

— John Ruskin

Let us then understand at once that change or variety is as much a necessity to the human heart and brain in buildings as in books; that there is no merit, though there is some occasional use, in monotony; and that we must no more expect to derive either pleasure or profit from an architecture whose ornaments are of one pattern, and whose pillars are of one proportion, than we should have a universe in which the clouds were all one shape, and the trees all of one shape.

— John Ruskin

Man's only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him. Reverence something to be worshiped by him, and love something to be cherished by him, forever.

— John Ruskin

Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.

— John Ruskin

Modern science gives lectures on botany, to show there is no such thing as a flower; on humanity, to show there is no such thing as a man; and on theology, to show there is no such thing as a God. No such thing as a man, but only a mechanism, No such thing as a God, but only a series of forces.

— John Ruskin

Modern traveling is not traveling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.

— John Ruskin

Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.

— John Ruskin

Nearly all our associations are determined by chance or necessity; and restricted within a narrow circle. We cannot know whom we would; and those whom we know, we cannot have at our side when we most need them. All the higher circles of human intelligence are, to those beneath, only momentarily and partially open... there is a society continually open to us, of people who will talk to us as long as we like, whatever our rank or occupation; — talk to us in the best words they can choose, and of the things nearest their hearts. And this society, because it is so numerous and so gentle, and can be kept waiting around us all day long, — kings and statesmen lingering patiently, not to grant audience, but to gain it! — in those plainly furnished and narrow ante-rooms, our bookcase shelves, — we make no account of that company, — perhaps never listen to a word they would say, all day long!

— John Ruskin