John Ruskin Famous Quotations

John Ruskin (1819 - 1900) is best known for his work as an art critic, sage writer, and social critic. He is also remembered as an author, poet, and artist. Ruskin's essays on art and architecture were extremely influential in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. These famous quotes dealing with goals, achievement, and success have been attributed to him.

A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.
Do not think of your faults, still less of other's faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.
Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.
Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them.
Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.
Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.
I believe the first test of a truly great man is in his humility.
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 general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.
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.
It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately.
It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.
Man's only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him. Reverence something to be worshipped by him, and love something to be cherished by him, forever.
Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.
Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.
Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.
The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.
When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.