John Ruskin

“ Huxley and Co. call ‘Secular education’? Or with what either the Bishop of Oxford, or Mr. Spurgeon, would call ‘Religious education’?
What to admire, or wonder at! Do you expect a child to wonder at—being taught that two and two make four— (though if only its masters had the sense to teach that, honestly, it would be something) —or at the number of copies of nasty novels and false news a steam-engine can print for its reading?
What to hope? Yes, my secular friends—What? That it shall be the richest shopman in the street; and be buried with black feathers enough over its coffin? ”

“ The two most frightful things I have ever yet seen in my life are the south-eastern suburb of Bradford, (six miles long,) and the scene from Wakefield bridge, by the chapel; yet I cannot but more and more reverence the fierce courage and industry, the gloomy endurance, and the infinite mechanical ingenuity of the great centres, as one reverences the fervid labours of a wasp’s nest, though the end of all is only a noxious lump of clay. ”

“ II. I trust in the nobleness of human nature, in the majesty of its faculties, the fulness of its mercy, and the joy of its love. And I will strive to love my neighbour as myself, and, even when I cannot, will act as if I did. III. I will labour, with such strength and opportunity as God gives me, for my own daily bread; and all that my hand finds to do, I will do with my might. IV. I will not deceive, or cause to be deceived, any human being for my gain or pleasure; nor hurt, or cause to be hurt, any human being for my gain or pleasure ”

“ On the chapel side there was the soft green English landscape, with woods and spires and halls, and the brown sails of boats silently moving among the flowery banks; on the town side there were picturesque traffic and life; the thundering weir, the wide still water beyond, the big dark-red granaries, with balconies and archways to the water, and the lofty white mills grinding out their cheering music.
“But there were no worse shapes than honest, dusty millers’ men, and browned boatmen, decent people; no open vileness and foul language were rampant in our quiet clean town in those days. ”

“ Bastardy and drunkenness are at present the darkest shades we can show; but there is perhaps some better influence at work from the vicinage of two great squires which secures us pure air and wide fields.
I am glad to read that you purpose vexing yourself less with the sins of the times during the coming summer. It is too great a burthen for a human mind to bear the world’s sins in spirit, as you do. If you mean to preserve yourself for the many thousands whose inner heart’s bitterness your voice has relieved, you must vex yourself less about this age’s madness. ”

“ The fool, whatever his wit, is the man who doesn’t know his master—who has said in his heart—there is no God—no Law.
The wise man knows his master. Less or more wise, he perceives lower or higher masters; but always some creature larger than himself—some law holier than his own. A law to be sought—learned, loved—obeyed; but in order to its discovery, the obedience must be begun first, to the best one knows. ”

“ Men say, too, that he is a stronger Tory than the bluest of the old squires. He has forgotten old Robin of the bobbins, and rules the people from whom he sprang, with an iron hand, as such often do. Naturally, his success has attracted others, and the town will soon be surrounded with forges. On the once green Calder bank, where I used to see garlands of brown pears ripening in the sweet sunshine, there is a desert of dross and ashes, and twenty black throats vomiting fire and fumes into the summer sky ”

“ Well, all that, of course, is very fine; but, actually, the people go through the churchyard to the path on the hill-brow, making the new iron railing an excuse to pitch their dust-heaps, and whatever of worse they have to get rid of, crockery and the rest,—down over the fence among the primroses and violets to the river,—and the whole blessed shore underneath, rough sandstone rock throwing the deep water off into eddies among shingle, is one waste of filth, town-drainage, broken saucepans, tannin, and mill-refuse. ”

“ Does any man, of all the men who have received this charge in England, know what it is to be a wolf?—recognize in himself the wolfish instinct, and the thirst for the blood of God’s flock? For if he does not know what is the nature of a wolf, how should he know what it is to be a shepherd? ”

“ Nor was our Hansli held in small esteem by other people, any more than by his children. He was so decided and so sure; words full of good sense were plenty with him; honourable in everything, he never set himself up for rich, nor complained of being poor; so that many a pretty lady would come expressly into the kitchen, when she heard that the broom-merchant was there, to inform herself how things went in the country, and how such and such a matter was turning out. ”

“ I see daily such warped morality, such crooked ways in the most urgent and important concerns of life, as to convince me that the axe should be laid to the root of the tree. Mainly I am disgusted—no more tolerant word will do—with the prevalent tone of thought in religious matters, and the resulting tortuous courses in daily work and worship. ”

“ And truly to all wholesome deed here in England, the chances of prosperity are few, and the distinctness of adversity only conquerable by fixed imagination and exhaustless patience—‘Adversis rerum immersabilis undis.’ The wisest men join with the fools, and the best men with the villains, to prevent, if they may, any good thing being done permanently—nay, to provoke and applaud the doing of consistently evil things permanently. To establish a national debt, and in the most legal terms—how easy! ”

“ There will be considerable loss by wear on a coinage of this pure metal; but nothing is so materially conducive to the honour of a state in all financial function as the purity of its coinage; and the loss will never, on the whole currency, equal annually the tenth part of the value of the gunpowder spent at present in salutes or fireworks; and, if a nation can afford to pay for loyal noise and fancies in fire, it may also, and much more rationally, for loyal truth and beauty in its circulating signs of wealth. ”

“ The mind of little Agnes, at all events, receives from story, pictures, and carol, altogether, no very traceable impression; but, I am happy to say, certainly no harm. She lives fifteen miles from the nearest manufacturing district,—sees no vice, except perhaps sometimes in the village on Sunday afternoons;—hears, from week’s end to week’s end, the sheep bleat, and the wind whistle,—but neither human blasphemy, nor human cruelty of command. ”

“ If there is one spot in England, where human creatures pass or live, which one would expect to find, in spite of their foul existence, still clean—it is Bolton Park. But to my final and utter amazement, I had not taken two steps by the waterside at the loveliest bend of the river below the stepping-stones, before I found myself again among broken crockery, cinders, cockle-shells, and tinkers’ refuse;—a large old gridiron forming the principal point of effect and interest among the pebbles. The filth must be regularly carried past the Abbey, and across the Park, to the place. ”

“ The gray old chapel, the shining water below, the far-winding green banks spangled with buttercups, the grove-clad hills of Heath and Kirkthorpe,—all seemed to pass into my heart for ever.
“There was no railway then, only the Doncaster coach careering over the Bridge with a brave sound of horn; fields and farmsteads stood where the Kirkgate station is; where the twenty black throats of the foundry belch out flame and soot, there were only strawberry grounds and blossoming pear-orchards, among which the throstles and blackbirds were shouting for gladness. ”

“ The mason bee, it appears, builds her nest of sand, which she chooses carefully grain by grain; then sticks, with bee-glue, as many grains together as she can carry, (like the blocks of brick we see our builders prepare for circular drains) —and builds her nest like a swallow’s, in any angle on the south side of a wall; only with a number of cells inside, like—a monastery, shall we say?—each cell being about the size of a thimble. ”

“ Little by little, if my life is spared to me, therefore, (and if I die, there will I doubt not be raised up some one else in my room) —little by little, I or they will get monies and lands together; handful gleaned after handful; field joined to field, and landmarks set which no man shall dare hereafter remove. And over those [284] fields of ours the winds of Heaven shall be pure; and upon them, the work of men shall be done in honour and truth. ”

“ Yes; very certainly, when you know which they are; for I will have you to abjure, with World, Flesh, and Devil, the literature of all the three:—and your music and drawing,—that is to say, all music and drawing which you have learned only for your own glory or amusement, and respecting which you have no idea that it may ever become, in a far truer sense, other people’s music and drawing.
For all the arts of mankind, and womankind, are only rightly learned, or practised, when they are so with the definite purpose of pleasing or teaching others. ”

“ So long as you deliberately refuse to help in any way a man who (you have every reason to know) possesses more of the righteousness of God than yourself, (when you have ample means to do so,) how can you be said to ‘do the will of your Father which is in Heaven’? or how can you expect to receive understanding to ‘know of the doctrine’ of the Saviour, (or of my doctrine,) ‘whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself’? If you possessed a genuine ‘faith,’ you would exercise humanity towards such a man as myself, and leave the result with God ”

“ It is possible she may have noticed—beforehand—some, of whose dispositions she may be doubtful; something, hereafter, I shall have to tell her of locust and hornet, no less than of bee; and although in general I shall especially avoid putting disagreeable or ugly things before her eyes, or into her mind, I should certainly require her positively, once for all, to know the sort of life led by creatures of at least alloyed moral nature,—such, for instance, as the ‘Turner Savage’ which, indeed, “lives in the haunts of men, whom it never willingly offends; but is the terror of all smaller insects. ”

“ There can be no evasion of such prohibition, because every tradesman in food will be merely the salaried servant of the Company, and there will be no temptation to it, because his salary will be the same, whether he sells or not. Of all articles of general consumption, the government will furnish its own priced standard; any man will be allowed to sell what he can produce above that standard, at what price he can get for it; but all goods below the government standard will be marked and priced as of such inferior quality;—and all bad food, cloth, or other article of service, destroyed. ”

“ Their foolish congregations are not enough in earnest even to be misled; and the increasing London or Liverpool respectable suburb is simply provided with its baker’s and butcher’s shop, its alehouse, its itinerant organ-grinders for the week, and stationary organ-grinder for Sunday, himself his monkey, in obedience to the commonest condition of demand and supply, and without much more danger in their Sunday’s entertainment than in their Saturday’s. ”

“ No man ever became, or can become, largely rich merely by labour and economy. All large fortunes (putting treasure-trove and gambling out of consideration) are founded either on occupation of land, usury, or taxation of labour. Whether openly or occultly, the landlord, money-lender, and capital-holding employer, gather into their possession a certain quantity of the means of existence which other people produce by the labour of their hands. ”

“ The particular kinds of folly also which lead youths to become clergymen, uncalled, are especially intractable. That a lad just out of his teens, and not under the influence of any deep religious enthusiasm, should ever contemplate the possibility of his being set up in the middle of a mixed company of men and women of the world, to instruct the aged, encourage the valiant, support the weak, reprove the guilty, and set an example to all;—and not feel what a ridiculous and blasphemous business it would be, if he only pretended to do it for hire ”

“ There is no rule of supremacy that can ever supersede this eternal, natural, and divine one. Higher by the head, broader in the shoulders, and heartier in the will, the lord of lands and lives must for ever be, than those he rules ”

“ So far as any living souls in the England of this day can use, understandingly, the words of this collect, they are already, consciously or not, companions of all good labourers in the vineyard of God. For those who use it reverently, yet have never set themselves to find out what the commandments of God are, nor how loveable they are, nor how far, instead of those commandments, the laws of the world are the only code they care for, nor how far they still think their own thoughts and speak their own words, it is assuredly time to search out these things. ”

“ Nor has ever any great work been accomplished by human creatures, in which instinct was not the principal mental agent, or in which the methods of design could be defined by rule, or apprehended by reason. It is therefore that agency through mechanism destroys the powers of art, and sentiments of religion, together.
And it will be found ultimately by all nations, as it was found long ago by those who have been leaders in human force and intellect, that the initial virtue of the race consists in the acknowledgment of their own lowly nature and submission to the laws of higher being. ”

“ Having so many to consider and consult, it is all I can do to get through the day’s work; I am obliged to take things as I find them, and do the best I can, in haste; and I might constantly be breaking rules, and not able to help it, and indeed I should not have time to think about it. I do not want to be hampered more than I am. I am not straitened for money; but most people with families are so more or less, and this is another element of difficulty. ”