John Ruskin Quotes

And one of the elders of the city , said , speak to us of good and evil. And he answered : You are good in countless ways , and you are not evil when you are not good .

Our selfishness is so robust and many-clutching that, well encouraged, it easily devours all sustenance away from our poor little scruples.

Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil. For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst? Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.

a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful.

There is indeed good and there is indeed evil, and both walk the earth. But good has little to do with the forms of religion, and evil has as little to do with so much behavior condemned by religion. Both good and evil vie for the passions of the heart. For love!

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart...

I never was so rapid in my virtue but my vice kept up with me.

It is not human to be without shame and without desire.

There is a capacity of virtue in us, and there is a capacity of vice to make your blood creep.

If you scratch some saints you will find the devil.

Virtue!--to be good and just-- Every heart, when sifted well, Is a clot of warmer dust, Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell.

Our virtues and vices couple with one another, and get children that resemble both their parents.

Evil, which is our companion all our days, is not to be treated as a foe. It is wrong to cocker vice, but we grow narrow and pithless if we are furtive about it, for this is at best a pretense, and the sage knows good and evil are kindred. The worst of men harm others, and the best injure themselves.

God was finally going to believe in a man both good and strong, but good and strong are still two different men.

The thing that interests me is the good and evil in everybody. I don't have conventional heroes in the films that I directed, because I believe there's good and evil in everybody.

If you look after goodness and truth, beauty will take care of itself.

Character: the grandest thing in the world.

Whoever despiseth shame, despiseth sin.

The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature- but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind.

Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.

I am a misanthrope yet utterly benevolent.

Virtue steals, like a guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice and infamy, clings to their devoted victim, and will not be driven quite away. Nothing can destroy the human heart.

I try to do the right thing.

In every one of us there are good seeds and bad. We have the seed of brotherhood, love, compassion, insight. But we have also the seed of anger, hate, dissent.

All of the films I have made, that I have chosen to make, are all about the thin line between good and evil. And also the thin line that exists in each and every one of us. That's what my films are about.