John Ruskin Quotes

All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be effort, and the law of human judgment, mercy.

Perfect is boring: Beauty is irregular.

Perfect is very boring, and if you happen to have a different look, that's a celebration of human nature, I think. If we were all symmetrical and perfect, life would be very dull.

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful.

The whole point about beauty is its imperfection.

In all things that live there are certain irregularities, and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry.

That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity – that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are a essential part and characteristic of beauty.

We are all patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game.

In everything, no matter what it may be, uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting, and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth

Mercy, mercy me, things ain't what they used to be.

To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.

As much as the world has an instinct for evil and is a breeding ground for genocide, holocaust, slavery, racism, war, oppression, and injustice, the world has an even greateer instinct for goodness, rebirth, mercy, beauty, truth, freedom and love.

What sex is, we don't know, but it must be some sort of fire. For it always communicates a sense of warmth, of glow. And when this glow becomes a pure shine, then we feel the sense of beauty. We all have the fire of sex slumbering or burning inside us. If we live to be ninety, it is still there. Or, if it dies, we become one of those ghastly living corpses which are unfortunately becoming more numerous in the world.

When somebody says I wouldn't change a thing they're thinking of something they would change.

So you see,' said Stepan Arkadyich, 'you're a very wholesome man. That is your virtue and your defect. You have a wholesome character, and you want all of life to be made up of wholesome phenomena, but that doesn't happen. So you despise the activity of public service because you want things always to correspond to their aim, and that doesn't happen. You also want the activity of the individual man always to have an aim, that love and family life always be one. And that doesn't happen. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.

What pursuit is more elegant than that of collecting the ignominies of our nature and transfixing them for show, each on the bright pin of a polished phrase?

We are all just a work in progress.

You are perfectly imperfect.

I don't even bother trying to picture a perfect world, because I don't think that perfection is something to strive for. I prefer imperfection. That's what makes things special. You know, things that change

Our natures lie in motion, without which we die.

Curiously enough, the Sublime is generally achieved through want of proportion.

People are like birds: on the wing, all beautiful; up close, all beady little eyes.

There are many lovely women, but no perfect ones.

People need to dance. I'd say dance at least twice a day. That's how to get your energy up and how you keep you revolutionary spirit going. It's Emma Goldman who said, "Any revolution where I can't dance is not my revolution." I think that's the revolution we want.

As unity demanded for its expression what at first might have seemed its opposite--variety; so repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite--energy. It is the most unfailing test of beauty; nothing can be ignoble that possesses it, nothing right that has it not.