John Ruskin

“ I wonder, sometimes, whether anybody has ever calculated, in England, how much taxation the nation pays annually for the maintenance of that great national institution. Observe—what I say of the spirit in which the English bear themselves at present, is founded on what I myself have seen and heard, not on what I read in journals. I read them little at home—here I hardly see them. I have no doubt that in the Liberal papers one might find much mouthing about liberty, as in the Conservative much about order, it being neither liberty nor order which is wanted, but Justice. ”

“ Neither does strength depend on extent of territory, any more than upon number of population. Take up your masses, put the cluster of the British Isles beside the mass of South America, and then consider whether any race of men need consider how much ground they stand upon. The strength is in the men, and in their unity and virtue, not in their standing-room. A little group of wise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools; and only that nation gains true territory which gains itself.
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin. ”

“ The recent direction of a great weight of public opinion against capital punishment is, I think, the sign of an awakening perception that punishment is the last and worst instrument in the hands of the legislature for the prevention of crime.
The true instruments of reformation are employment and reward—not punishment. Aid the willing, honor the virtuous, and compel the idle into occupation, and there will be no need for the compelling of any into the great and last indolence of death. ”

“ But what the public need to know is, how a final and perfect loss of money takes place, so that the whole nation, instead of being rich, shall be getting gradually poor. And then, indeed, if one man in spending his money destroys it, and another in spending it makes more of it, it becomes a grave question in whose hands it is, and whether honest or dishonest people are likely to spend it to the best purpose. Will you permit me, Sir, to lay this not unprofitable subject of inquiry before your readers, while, to the very best purpose, they are investing a little money in sea air? ”

“ Of all dishonorable and impious captivities of this age, the darkest was that of England to Russia, by which she was compelled to refuse to give Greece a King when Greece besought one from her, and to permit that there should be set on the Acropolis throne no Governor Eyre, nor anything like him, but such a shadow of King as the black fates cast upon a nation for a curse, saying, "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child!" ”

“ But, Sir, the law of supply and demand, as believed in by the British public under the guidance of their economists, is a natural law regulating prices, which it is not at all in their option to "neglect." And it is precisely because I have always declared that there is no such natural law, but that prices can be, and ought to be, regulated by laws of expediency and justice, that political economists have thought I did not understand their science, and you now say I laugh at it. ”

“ I wish entirely to resist the practice of writing for money early in life. I think an author's business requires as much training as a musician's, and that, as soon as he can write really well, there would always, for a man of worth and sense, be found capital enough to enable him to be able to print, say, a hundred pages of his careful work; which, if the public were pleased with, they would soon enable him to print more. I do not think young men should rush into print, nor old ones modify their books to please publishers. ”

“ To me, the state of the modern political mind, which hangs the slaughter of twenty thousand men, and the destinies of twenty myriads of human souls, on the trick that transforms a Ministry, or the chances of an enlarged or diminished interest in trade, is something so horrible that I find no utterance wherewith to characterize it—nor any courage wherewith to face the continued thought of it, unless I had clear expectation of doing good by the effort—expectation which the mere existence of the fact forbids. ”

“ Do not think I dislike the Austrians. I have great respect and affection for them, and I have seen more of them in familiar intercourse than most Englishmen. One of my best friends in Venice in the winter of 1849-50 was the Artillery officer who had directed the fire on the side of Mestre in 1848. I have never known a nobler person. Brave, kind, and gay—as gentle as a lamb, as playful as a kitten—knightly in courtesy and in all tones of thought—ready at any instant to lay down his life for his country or his Emperor. ”

“ And in private and household economy you may always judge of its perfectness by its fair balance between the use and the pleasure of its possessions: you will see the wise cottager's garden trimly divided between its well-set vegetables and its fragrant flowers: you will see the good housewife taking pride in her pretty tablecloth and her glittering shelves, no less than in her well-dressed dish and full store-room: the care will alternate with gayety; and though you will reverence her in her seriousness, you will know her best by her smile."—"Political Economy of Art" (1857) , pp. ”

“ But what will be sweetest of all, if it may come to pass, will be that you should show yourself better even than me, and so make me your servant also: so that you need not fear in advancing age to be less honored in my house; but may have sure hope that in becoming old, by how much more you have become also a noble fellow-worker with me, and joint guardian of our children's possessions, by so much shall you be more honored in my household. For what is lovely and good increases for all men—not through fairness of the body, but through strength and virtue in things pertaining to life. ”

“ A great museum in the present state of the public mind is simply an exhibition of the possible modes of doing wrong in art, and an accumulation of uselessly multiplied ugliness in misunderstood nature. Our own museum [Pg 127] at Oxford is full of distorted skulls, and your Sheffield ironwork department will necessarily contain the most barbarous abortions that human rudeness has ever produced with human fingers. The capitals of the iron shafts in any railway station, for instance, are things to make a man wish—for shame of his species—that he had been born a dog or a bee. ”

“ My Dear Sir: What in the devil's name have you to do with either Mr. D'Israeli or Mr. Gladstone? You are students at the University, and have no more business with politics than you have with rat-catching.
Had you ever read ten words of mine [with understanding] you would have known that I care no more [either] for Mr. D'Israeli or Mr. Gladstone than for two old bagpipes with the drones going by steam, but that I hate all Liberalism as I do Beelzebub, and that, with Carlyle, I stand, we two alone now in England, for God and the Queen.
Ever faithfully yours,
J. Ruskin. ”

“ I dislike the American serf-economy, which separates, occasionally, man and wife; but I more dislike the English serf-economy, which prevents men from being able to have wives at all. I dislike the slavery which obliges women (if it does) to carry their children over frozen rivers; but I more dislike the slavery which makes them throw their children into wells. I would willingly hinder the selling of girls on the Gold Coast; but primarily, if I might, would hinder the selling of them in Mayfair. ”

“ Now, Sir, the "value" of any piece of labor (I should have written "price," not "value," but it is no matter) —that is to say, the quantity of food and air which will enable a man to perform it without eventually losing any of his flesh or nervous energy, is as absolutely fixed a quantity as the weight of powder necessary to carry a given ball a given distance. And within limits varying by exceedingly minor and unimportant circumstances, it is an ascertainable quantity. ”

“ Neither the roads nor the railroads of any nation should belong to any private persons. All means of public transit should be provided at public expense, by public determination where such means are needed, and the public should be its own "shareholder."
Neither road, nor railroad, nor canal should ever pay dividends to anybody. They should pay their working expenses, and no more. All dividends are simply a tax on the traveller and the goods, levied by the person to whom the road or canal belongs, for the right of passing over his property. ”

“ For us, we ought to help France now, if we ever did anything, but of course there remains for us only neutrality—selling of coke, and silence (if we have grace enough left to keep it) . I have only broken mine to say that I am ashamed to speak as being one of a nation regardless of its honor alike in trade and policy; poor, yet not careful to keep even the treasure of probity—and rich, without being able to afford itself the luxury of courage. ”

“ Why, what is "employment" but the putting out of vital force instead of mechanical force? We are continually [Pg 136] in search of means of strength—to pull, to hammer, to fetch, to carry; we waste our future resources to get power, while we leave all the living fuel to burn itself out in mere pestiferous breath and production of its variously noisome forms of ashes! Clearly, if we want fire for force, we want men for force first. The industrious hands must have so much to do that they can do no more, or else we need not use machines to help them: then use the idle hands first. ”

“ The employment forms the habits of body and mind, and these are the constitution of the man—the greater part of his moral or persistent nature, whatever effort, under special [Pg 133] excitement, he may make to change or overcome them. Employment is the half, and the primal half, of education—it is the warp of it; and the fineness or the endurance of all subsequently woven pattern depends wholly on its straightness and strength. ”

“ To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."
Sir: I see you are writing of criticism; [152] some of your readers may, perhaps, be interested in hearing the notions of a man who has dabbled in it a good many years. I believe, in a word, that criticism is as impertinent in the world as it is in a drawing-room. In a kindly and well-bred company, if anybody tries to please them, they try to be pleased; if anybody tries to astonish them, they have the courtesy to be astonished; if people become tiresome, they ask somebody else to play, or sing, or what not, but they don't criticise. ”

“ Neither, by destroying money, do I mean burning notes, or throwing gold away. If I burn a five-pound note, or throw five sovereigns into the sea, I hurt no one but myself; nay, I benefit others, for everybody with a pound in his pocket is richer by the withdrawal of my competition in the market. But what I want you to make your readers discover is how the true money is made that will get them houses and dinners; and on the other hand how money is truly lost, or so diminished in value that all they can get in a year will not buy them comfortable houses, nor satisfactory dinners. ”

“ Might you not invite letters on this quite radical and essential question—how money is truly made, and how it is truly lost, not by one person or another, but by the whole nation?
For, practically, people's eyes are so intensely fixed on the immediate operation of money as it changes hands, that they hardly ever reflect on its first origin or final disappearance. They are always considering how to get it from somebody else, but never how to get it where that somebody else got it. ”

“ But the principal point of all to be kept in view is that in every idle arm and shoulder throughout the country there is a certain quantity of force, equivalent to the force of so much fuel; and that it is mere insane waste to dig for coal for our force, while the vital force is unused; and not only unused, but, in being so, corrupting and polluting itself. We waste our coal and spoil our humanity at one and the same instant. Therefore, whenever there is an idle arm, always save coal with it, and the stores of England will last all the longer. ”

“ The entire cessation of all employment for the faculty, which, in the best men of former ages, was continually exercised and satisfied in the realization of the presence of Christ with the hosts of Heaven, leaves the part of the brain which it employed absolutely vacant, and ready to suck in, with the avidity of vacuum, whatever pleasantness may be presented to the natural sight in the gas-lighted beauty of pantomimic and casino Paradise. ”

“ Agriculturists she has had, I think, among her gentlemen a little before there were gentlemen farmers in England; something she has told us of agriculture, also, pleasantly by the reeds of Mincio and among the apple-blossoms wet with Arno. Her streams have learned obedience before now: Fonte Branda and the Fountain of Joy flow at Sienna still; the rivulets that make green the slopes of Casentino may yet satisfy true men's thirst. "Where is the money to come from?" Let Italy keep her souls pure, and she will not need to alloy her florins. ”

“ It may be so; the progress of science cannot, perhaps, be otherwise registered than by new facilities of destruction; and the brotherly love of our enlarging Christianity be only proved by multiplication of murder.
But the wonder has always been great to me that heroism has never been supposed consistent with the practice of supplying people with food, or clothes, but only with that of quartering one's self upon them for food, and stripping them of their clothes. Spoiling of armor is an heroic deed in all ages; but the selling of clothes, old or new, has never taken any color of magnanimity. ”