John Ruskin Quotes

Saw life steadily and saw it whole.

I think it's important to remember that by the second half of our lives, we are meant to see in wholes, and no longer just in parts.

When we pull back and get, for a moment, the 'bird's eye' view of life, it reveals meanings that are ungraspable by the narrow focus of our usual worm's eye view

It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth . . . and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below.

Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity. When the Illustrious Buddha taught about the world, he had to divide it into Samsara and Nirvana, illusion and truth, into suffering and salvation. One cannot do otherwise, there is no other method for those who teach. But the world itself, being in and around us, is never one-sided. Never is a man or a deed wholly Samsara or wholly Nirvana; never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner. This only seems so because we suffer the illusion that time is something real.

Life is a million different dots making one gigantic picture. And maybe the big picture is nice, maybe it's amazing, but if you're standing with your face pressed up against a bunch of black dots, it's really hard to tell.

Funny, when you finally faced reality, it was amazing how clearly you could see things.

Whatever the situation, just take it for what it is. You don't have to make it worse or better than it is. It just is what it is. Always deal with the honesty, the truth of what something is, and then you've got all kinds of choices.

One thought includes all thought, in the sense that a grain of sand includes the universe.

To see some truths you must stand outside and look in.

For me, Rama and Rahim are one and the same deity. I acknowledge no other God but the one God of truth and righteousness.

The soul of all is one soul and the truth is one truth, under whatever religion it is hidden.

The calmer thought is not always the right thought, just as the distant view is not always the truest view

Information is endlessly available to us; where shall wisdom be found?

I've just come to realize I'm going to share my point of view. Some people won't like me for it. Some people will. I will work every day to be as honest as I can because I do believe that we're all trying to get to the same place. But various people have tricked us into believing that we are not. And I see America going into that space.

There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one.

Truth, which is simple and one, admits of no variety.

"And" seems to me closest. "And" nods toward the real. And "and" is the path to perspective. To feel and see from more angles and know all of them true, even the incomprehensible ones, even the ones that contradict one another.

What you think is the point is not the point at all but only the beginning of the sharpness.

Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.

And suddenly everything, absolutely everything, was there.

Science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole.

As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be you can't see how it is.

This thou must always bear in mind, what is the nature of the whole.

The true is the whole.