John Ruskin Quotes

It may be that the deep necessity of art is the examination of self-deception.

Truth is not to be found outside. No teacher, no scripture can give it to you. It is inside you and if you wish to attain it, seek your own company. Be with yourself.

The quest for truth must be carried out by each person individually. It is like breathing, something which no one else can do for us.

We can't see ourselves very clearly. This I learned as a songwriter. I'm forever trying to figure out what my own truth is.

It's just never the same. At least for me.It's probably because it's just who I am, I never know what that [truth] is. It's so momentary to go, "Oh, yeah, that's true." That's a fundamental starting point for me - to figure out what's true from moment to moment to moment.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.

Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.

There is no formula. There are only confirmations to formulas which one has already discovered oneself.

Your job on Earth, therefore, is not to learn (because you already know), but to remember Who You Are. And to remember who everyone else is.

Don't think that your truth could be found by someone else.

It is very easy to conform to what your society or your parents and teachers tell you. That is a safe and easy way of existing; but that is not living...To live is to find out for yourself what is true.

It is better to be lonely than allow people who are not going anywhere keep you from your destiny.

Buddhism doesn't tell you what is false and what is true but it encourages you to find out for yourself.

No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge. The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.

It is a good thing to learn the truth one's self. To first believe with all your heart, and then not to believe, is good too. It fattens the emotions and makes them to stretch.

We sometimes find truth, but more often it finds us.

The point of life is not to get anywhere—it is to notice that you are, and have always been, already there. You are always and forever in the moment of pure creation. The point of life therefore is to create—who and what you are, and then to experience that.

It wasn't until I started reading and found books they wouldn't let us read in school that I discovered you could be insane and happy and have a good life without being like everybody else.

Then "wrong" is right, and "right" is wrong! Yet I'll tell you this, to help you out of your dilemma: believe nothing I say. Simply live it. Experience it. Then live whatever other paradigm you want to construct. Afterward, look to your experience to find your truth.

Life (as you call it) is an opportunity for you to know experientially what you already know conceptually. You need learn nothing to do this. You need merely remember what you already know, and act on it.

Nothing can happen, nothing can occur in your life which is not a precisely perfect opportunity for you to heal something, create something, or experience something that you wish to heal, create, or experience in order to be who you really are.

If you have found your truth within yourself there is nothing more in this whole existence to find.

In my cheapest moments I am apt to think that it is n't my business to be "seeking the spirit," but as much its business to be seeking me.

Everyday we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read the lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Everyman, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths.

This is what I am learning, at 82 years old: the main thing is to be in love with the search for truth.