John Ruskin Quotes

By his disobedience of God's law, before man had exercised his power to bring children into the earth, not only Adam lost everything for himself, but his children were born as sinners, imperfect, and without the right to live.

Art is built on the deepest themes of human meaning: good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death, love and hate. No other story has incarnated those themes more than the story of Jesus.

We are tainted by modern philosophy which has taught us that all is good, whereas evil has polluted everything and in a very real sense all is evil, since nothing is in its proper place.

Human beings are capable of great good, but also of the basest evil.

Our greatest pleasure, surely, is in fragments, just as we derive the most pleasure from life if we regard it as a fragment, whereas the whole and the complete and the perfect are basically abhorrent.

a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful.

Christians are not perfect, and all of us do sin along the way. But genuine Christians hear His voice and follow Him.

In the story of the Creation we read: ". . . And behold, it was very good." But, in the passage where Moses reproves Israel, the verse says: "See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil." Where did the evil come from? Evil too is good. It is the lowest rung of perfect goodness. If you do good deeds, even evil will become good; but if you sin, evil will really become evil.

No child of God sins to that degree as to make himself incapable of forgiveness.

Your relationship is not supposed to be perfect all the time, your business is not supposed to do well all the time, your soufflés are not supposed to raise perfectly all the time. Everything is designed to go wrong so that you can gain the skills of rediscovering your tracks, even in difficult or frightening circumstances. Especially in difficult and frightening circumstances.

We are honest about our methods and our mistakes. We are not perfect - it isn't possible to be perfect - but we are trying to go in the right direction and in those circumstances, it's best not to mystify what we are trying to do.

A perfect character might be attended with the inconvenience of being envied and hated; and that a benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself, to keep his friends in countenance.

Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite.

The closer you come to Jesus, the more faulty you will appear in your own eyes; for your vision will be clearer, and your imperfections will be seen in broad and distinct contrast to His perfect nature.

A lack of doxology leads to depravity.

Everything that looks too perfect is too perfect to be perfect.

I know I'm flawed - but perfect is boring anyway! Flawed is good!

Barack Obama was amazing, but he wasn't perfect. We all know that. He was the closest thing to perfect America's ever had. We were basking in the glow. We forgot that there's always going to be a backlash within a movement every time. When I think about race, there were a lot of pockets of people that were still living in fear under the Obama administration, but we were in this blissful celebration mode. Now we are constantly reminded that, although there are lots of good people in the world, there are just as many horrible people.

Perfection is a toxic desire. We are not supposed to be perfect. The challenge is not to be perfect, it's to be whole.

My kids are supposed to live till they are one hundred. You don't have to have a perfect house or a perfect relationship with your child or a perfect child, and you yourself do not have to be perfect.

To me, the most perfect screenplay ever written will be one word, when you finally reduce it down to that. Until then, writing will be an imperfect form of communication.

False notes [on the piano] are human. Why does everything have to be perfect? You know, perfection itself is imperfection.

Remember that your job as a practicing writer is to remember it's never going to be perfect on your first pass.

There is no art which has not had its beginnings in things full of errors. Nothing is at the same time both new and perfect.

I am not a perfect man who has led a faultless life.