John Ruskin (1819-1900)

John Ruskin was an English polymath – a writer, lecturer, art historian, art critic, draughtsman and philanthropist of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as art, architecture, political economy, education, museology, geology, botany, ornithology, literature, history, and myth.

Quotes

There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey.
Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces up, and snow is exhilarating; there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.
We require from buildings, as from men, two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it; which last is itself another form of duty.
When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.
Our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves what shall be true for the future.

Time
He who can take no interest in what is small will take false interest in what is great.
The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.
When a man is wrapped up in himself he makes a pretty small package.
When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.
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.

Work
The highest reward for man's toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it.
...in order that a man may be happy, it is necessary that he should not only be capable of his work, but a good judge of his work.

Work
You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself.
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.

Writing
Of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave.
This is the true nature of home -- it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from injury, but from all terror, doubt and division.
There is nothing in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and he who considers price only is that man's lawful prey.
Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of intelligent effort.
I believe that the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I don't mean by humility, doubt of his power. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not of them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.