John Ruskin

Life is a magic vase filled to the brim, so made that you cannot dip from it nor draw from it; but it overflows into the hand that drops treasures into it. Drop in malice and it overflows hate; drop in charity and it overflows love.

I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this; was it done with enjoyment, was the carver happy while he was about it?

In great countries, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents want to make them into adults. In vile countries, the children are always wanting to be adults and the parents want to keep them children.

Drawing is a means of obtaining and communicating knowledge

No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.

To use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own, and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.

Science studies the relations of things to each other: but art studies only their relations to man.

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

To give alms is nothing unless you give thought also.

He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.

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

Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.

To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.

People are eternally divided into two classes, the believer, builder, and praiser...and the unbeliever, destroyer and critic.

Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.

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.

Education is the leading human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them; and these two objects are always attainable together, and by the same means; the training which makes man happiest in themselves also makes them most serviceable to others.

The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know in life.

Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor.