Class _EiiSiLS_a 
 
 CilBOaGHT DEPOSIE 
 
Beautiful Thoughts 
 
 FROM 
 
 John Ruskin 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 JAMES POTT & COMPANY 
 
 1908 
 

 UBRARY of CONGRESS 
 I wu Copies tiecovdtf 
 
 JUL 23 1908 
 
 Copyright, 1908, by 
 JAMES POTT & CO. 
 
JANUARY 
 
January ist. 
 You ask for freedom of thought ; 
 but if you have not sufficient grounds 
 for thought, you have no business to 
 think ; and if you have sufficient 
 grounds, you have no business to 
 think wrong. Only one thought is 
 possible to you if you are wise — 
 your liberty is geometrically propor- 
 tionate to your folly. 
 
 — The Queen of the Air. 
 
 January 2d, 
 It has been said — it ought always 
 to be said, for it is true, — that a bet- 
 ter and more honorable offering is 
 made to our Master in ministry to 
 the poor, in extending the knowledge 
 
6 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 of His name, in the practice of the 
 virtues by which that name is hal- 
 lowed, than in material presents to 
 His temple. Assuredly it is so : 
 woe to all who think that any other 
 kind or manner of offering may in 
 any wise take the place of these ! 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 I 
 
 January jd. 
 Let the reader consider seriously 
 what he would give at any moment 
 to have the power of arresting the 
 fairest scenes, those which so often 
 rise before him only to vanish ; to 
 stay the cloud in its fading, the leaf 
 in its trembling, and the shadows in 
 their changing ; to bid the fitful foam 
 be fixed upon the river, and the rip- 
 ples be everlasting upon the lake ; 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 and then to bear away with him no 
 darkness or feeble sun-stain (though 
 even that is beautiful), but a counter- 
 type, in allegory, simile, or personifi- 
 cation, which deeply enforce them. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestcs. 
 
 January 4th. 
 The greatest efforts of the race 
 have always been traceable to the 
 love of praise, as its greatest catastro- 
 phes to the love of pleasure. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 January ^th. 
 For I do not speak, nor have I 
 ever spoken, since the time of first 
 forward youth, in any proselyting 
 temper, as desiring to persuade any 
 one to believe anything ; but whom- 
 
8 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 soever I venture to address, I take 
 for the time his creed as I find it, and 
 endeavor to push it into such vital 
 fruit as it seems capable of 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 January 6th. 
 Not in the wantonness of wealth, 
 not in vain ministry to the desire of 
 the eyes or the pride of life, were 
 those marbles hewn into transparent 
 strength, and those arches arrayed in 
 the colors of the iris. There is a 
 message written in the dyes of them, 
 that once was written in blood ; and 
 a sound in the echoes of their vaults, 
 that one day shall fill the vault of 
 heaven, — " He shall return, to do 
 judgment and justice." The strength 
 of Venice was given her, so long as 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 she remembered this ; her destruction 
 found her when she had forgotten 
 this; and it found her irrevocably, 
 because she forgot it without excuse. 
 
 — Stoties of Venice. 
 
 January Jth. 
 No one ever gets wiser by doing 
 wrong, nor stronger. You will get 
 wiser and stronger only by doing 
 right, whether forced or not ; the 
 prime, the one need is to do M^/, 
 under whatever compulsion, until you 
 can do it without compulsion. And 
 then you are a Man. 
 
 — The Queen of the Air. 
 
 January 8th. 
 Of all that they have, His tithe 
 must be rendered to Him, or in so 
 far and in so much He is forgotten : 
 
10 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 of the skill and of the treasure, of the 
 strength and of the mind, of the time 
 and of the toil, offering must be made 
 reverently ; and if there be any differ- 
 ence between the Levitical and the 
 Christian offering, it is that the latter 
 may be just so much the wider in its 
 range as it is less typical in its meaning, 
 as it is thankful instead of sacrificial. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 January gth. 
 He who habituates himself in his 
 daily life to seek for the stern facts 
 in whatever he hears or sees, will 
 have these facts again brought before 
 him by the involuntary imaginative 
 power, in their noblest associations; 
 and he who seeks for frivolities and 
 fallacies, will have frivolities and fal- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 11 
 
 lacies again presented to him in his 
 dreams. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 January loth. 
 Without venturing to pronounce 
 — since on such a matter human 
 judgment is by no means conclusive 
 — what is or is not the noblest of 
 God's works, we may yet admit so 
 much of Pope's assertion as that an 
 honest man is among his best works 
 presently visible, and, as such things 
 stand, a somewhat rare one ; but not 
 an incredible or miraculous work ; 
 still less an abnormal one. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
 January nth. 
 And shall we not look with changed 
 temper down the long perspective of 
 
12 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 St. Mark's Place towards the seven- 
 fold gates and glowing domes of its 
 temple, when we know with what 
 solemn purpose the shafts of it were 
 lifted above the pavement of the pop- 
 ulous square ? Men met there from 
 all countries of the earth, for traffic or 
 for pleasure ; but, above the crowd 
 swaying for ever to and fro in the 
 restlessness of avarice or thirst of 
 delight, was seen perpetually the 
 glory of the temple, attesting to 
 them, whether they would hear or 
 whether they would forbear, that 
 there was one treasure which the 
 merchantmen might buy without a 
 price, and one delight better than all 
 others, in the word and the statutes 
 of God. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 13 
 
 January I2th. 
 Imitation is like charity. When 
 it is done for love it is lovely ; when 
 it is done for show, hateful. 
 
 — The Queen of the Air, 
 
 January 13th. 
 
 I believe the first test of a truly 
 great man is his humility. I do not 
 mean by humiHty, doubt of his own 
 power, or hesitation of speaking his 
 opinions ; but a right understanding 
 of the relation between what he can 
 do and say, and the rest of the world's 
 sayings and doings. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 January 14th, 
 It can never be shown generally 
 either that the interests of master and 
 
14 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 laborer are alike, or that they are op- 
 posed ; for, according to circumstan- 
 ces, they may be either. It is, indeed, 
 always the interest of both that the 
 work should be rightly done, and a just 
 price obtained for it ; but, in the divi- 
 sion of profits, the gain of the one may 
 or may not be the loss of the other. 
 It is not the master's interest to pay 
 wages so low as to leave the men sickly 
 and depressed, nor the workman's in- 
 terest to be paid high wages if the 
 smallness of the master's profit hinders 
 him from enlarging his business, or 
 conducting it in a safe and liberal way. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
 January i^th. 
 The Greek race was not at all one 
 of exalted beauty, but only of general 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 15 
 
 and healthy completeness of form. 
 They were only, and could be only, 
 beautiful in body to the degree that 
 they were beautiful in soul (for you 
 will find, when you read deeply into 
 the matter, that the body is only the 
 soul made visible). 
 
 — T/ie Quee7i of the Air. 
 
 January i6th. 
 It will be seen, that 1 am no advo- 
 cate for meanness of private habita- 
 tion. I would fain introduce into it 
 all magnificence, care, and beauty, 
 where they are possible ; but I would 
 not have that useless expense in un- 
 noticed fineries or formalities; corni- 
 cing of ceilings and graining of doors, 
 and fringing of curtains, and thou- 
 sands such; things which have become 
 
16 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 foolishly and apathetically habitual 
 — things on whose common appli- 
 ance hang whole trades, to which there 
 never yet belonged the blessing of giv- 
 ing one ray of real pleasure, or becom- 
 ing of the remotest or most contempt- 
 ible use — things which cause half the 
 expense of life, and destroy more than 
 half its comfort, manliness, respecta- 
 bility, freshness and facility. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 January lyth- 
 All great men not only know their 
 business, but usually know that they 
 know it : and are not only right in 
 their main opinions, but they usually 
 know that they are right in them ; only 
 they do not think much of themselves 
 on that account. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes, 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 17 
 
 January i8th. 
 For all books are divisible into two 
 classes, the books of the hour, and 
 the books of all time. Mark this 
 distinction — it is not one of quality 
 only. It is not merely the bad book 
 that does not last, and the good one 
 that does. It is a distinction of 
 species. There are good books for 
 the hour, and good ones for all time ; 
 bad books for the hour and bad ones 
 for all time. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 January igth. 
 Our eyes are now familiar and 
 wearied with writing ; and if an in- 
 scription is put upon a building, un- 
 less it be large and clear, it is ten to 
 one whether we ever trouble ourselves 
 
18 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 to decipher it. But the old architect 
 was sure of readers. He knew that 
 every one would be glad to decipher 
 all that he wrote ; that they would 
 rejoice in possessing the vaulted 
 leaves of his stone manuscript ; and 
 that the more he gave them, the more 
 grateful would the people be. We 
 must take some pains, therefore, 
 when we enter St. Mark's, to read 
 all that is inscribed, or we shall not 
 penetrate into the feeling either of 
 the builder or of his times. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 January 20th. 
 I have always found that the less 
 we speak of our intentions, the more 
 chance there is of our realizing them. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 19 
 
 January 2ist. 
 God never forgets any work or 
 labor of love ; and whatever it may- 
 be of which the first and best por- 
 tions or powers have been presented 
 to Him, He will multiply and in- 
 crease sevenfold. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 January 22d. 
 Fancy plays like a squirrel in its 
 circular prison, and is happy ; but 
 Imagination is a pilgrim on the earth 
 — and her home is in heaven. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 January 2^d. 
 The natural and right system re- 
 specting all labor is, that it should 
 be paid at a fixed rate, but the good 
 
20 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 workmen employed, and the bad 
 workmen unemployed. The false, 
 unnatural, and destructive system is 
 when the bad workman is allowed 
 to offer his work at half price, and 
 either take the place of the good, or 
 force him by his competition to work 
 for an inadequate sum. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
 January 24th. 
 Was any woman, do you suppose, 
 ever the better for possessing dia- 
 monds ? but how many have been 
 made base, frivolous, and miserable 
 by desiring them ? Was ever man 
 the better for having coffers full of 
 gold ? But who shall measure the 
 guilt that is incurred to fill them ? 
 Look into the history of any civil- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 21 
 
 ized nations ; analyze, with reference 
 to this one cause of crime and mis- 
 ery, the Hves and thoughts of their 
 nobles, priests, merchants, and men 
 of luxurious life. Every other temp- 
 tation is at last concentrated into this ; 
 pride, and lust, and envy, and anger 
 all give up their strength to avarice. 
 The sin of the whole world is essen- 
 tially the sin of Judas. Men do not 
 disbelieve their Christ, but they sell 
 Him. 
 
 —Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 January 2^th. 
 We are none of us so good archi- 
 tects as to be able to work habitually 
 beneath our strength ; and yet there 
 is not a building that I know of, 
 lately raised, wherein it is not suffi- 
 
22 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 ciently evident that neither architect 
 nor builder has done his best. It is 
 the especial characteristic of modern 
 work. All old work nearly has been 
 hard work. It may be the hard work 
 of children, of barbarians, of rustics ; 
 but it is always their utmost. Ours 
 has as constantly the look of money's 
 worth, of a stopping short wherever 
 and whenever we can, of a lazy com- 
 pliance with low conditions ; never 
 of a fair putting forth of our strength. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 January 26th, 
 So natural is it to the human heart 
 to fix itself in hope rather than in 
 present possession, and so subtle is 
 the charm which the imagination casts 
 over what is distant or denied, that 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 23 
 
 there is often a more touching power 
 in the scenes which contain far-away 
 promises of something greater than 
 themselves, than in those which ex- 
 haust the treasures and powers of 
 nature in an unconquerable and ex- 
 cellent glory, leaving nothing more 
 to be by fancy pictured or pursued. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes, 
 
 January 2yth. 
 Do you know, if you read this, 
 that you cannot read that — that what 
 you lose to-day you cannot gain to- 
 morrow ? Will you go and gossip 
 with your housemaid, or your stable- 
 boy, when you may talk with queens 
 and kings ; or flatter yourselves that it 
 is with any worthy consciousness of 
 your own claims to respect that you 
 
24 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 jostle with the common crowd for 
 entree here and audience there, when 
 all the while this eternal court is open 
 to you, with its society wide as the 
 world, multitudinous as its days, the 
 chosen, and the mighty, of every 
 place and time ? 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 January 28th, 
 I have above spoken of the whole 
 church as a great Book of Common 
 Prayer ; the mosaics were its illumi- 
 nations, and the common people of 
 the time were taught their Scripture 
 history by means of them, more im- 
 pressively perhaps, though far less 
 fully, than ours are now by Scripture 
 reading. They had no other Bible, 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 25 
 
 and — Protestants do not often enough 
 consider this — could have no other* 
 We find it somewhat difficult to fur- 
 nish our poor with printed Bibles ; 
 consider what the difficulty must have 
 been when they could be given only in 
 manuscript. The walls of the church 
 necessarily became the poor man's 
 Bible, and a picture was more easily 
 read upon the walls than a chapter. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 January 2gth. 
 Covetousness is not natural to man 
 — generosity is ; but covetousness 
 must be excited by a special cause, as 
 a given disease by a given miasma ; 
 and the essential nature of a material 
 for the excitement of covetousness, is 
 
26 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 that it shall be a beautiful thing which 
 can be retained without a use. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 January joth. 
 It is a strange thing how little in 
 general people know about the sky. 
 It is the part of creation in which 
 Nature has done more for the sake 
 of pleasing man — more for the sole 
 and evident purpose of talking to him, 
 and teaching him — than in any other 
 of her works ; and it is just the part 
 in which we least attend to her. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 January Jist, 
 Philosophically, it does not, at first 
 sight, appear reasonable (many writers 
 have endeavored to prove it unreason- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 27 
 
 able) that a peaceable and rational 
 person, whose trade is buying and sell- 
 ing, should be held in less honor than 
 an unpeaceable and often irrational 
 person, whose trade is slaying. Nev- 
 ertheless, the consent of mankind has 
 always, in spite of the philosophers, 
 given precedence to the soldier. 
 
 — C/nio this Last. 
 
FEBRUARY 
 
February ist. 
 If there is no rest which remaineth 
 for you, is there none you might pres- 
 ently take ? was this grass of the earth 
 made green for your shroud only, not 
 for your bed ? and can you never lie 
 down upon it, but only under it ? 
 The heathen, in their saddest hours, 
 thought not so. They knew that life 
 brought its contest, but they expected 
 from it also the crown of all contests. 
 
 — The Crmvn of Wild Olive. 
 
 February 2d, 
 
 The practical, immediate office of 
 
 the earthquake and pestilence is to 
 
 slay us, like moths ; and, as moths, 
 
 we shall be wise to live out of their 
 
32 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 way. So the practical, immediate of- 
 fice of gold and diamonds is the mul- 
 tiplied destruction of souls (in what- 
 ever sense you have been taught to 
 understand that phrase) ; and the pa- 
 ralysis of wholesome human effort 
 and thought on the face of God's 
 earth : and a wise nation will live out 
 of the way of them. The money 
 which the English habitually spend 
 in cutting diamonds would, in ten 
 years, if it were applied to cutting 
 rocks instead, leave no dangerous 
 reef nor difficult harbor round the 
 whole island coast. 
 
 —Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 February jd. 
 But so it is, that, while precious 
 materials may, with a certain profu- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 33 
 
 sion and negligence, be employed for 
 the magnificence of what is seldom 
 seen, the work of man cannot be 
 carelessly and idly bestowed, without 
 an immediate sense of wrong ; as if 
 the strength of the living creature 
 were never intended by its Maker to 
 be sacrificed in vain, though it is well 
 for us sometimes to part with what 
 we esteem precious of substance, as 
 showing that in such service it be- 
 comes but dross and dust. 
 
 — T/te Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 February ^th. 
 Very ready we are to say of a 
 book, " How good this is — that's ex- 
 actly what I think ! " But the right 
 feeling is, " How strange that is ! I 
 never thought of that before, and yet 
 
34 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 I see it is true ; or if I do not now, 
 I hope I shall, some day." But 
 whether thus submissively or not, at 
 least be sure that you go to the au- 
 thor to get at his meaning, not to find 
 yours. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 February ^th. 
 Twenty years ago, there was no 
 lovelier piece of lowland scenery in 
 South England, nor any more pa- 
 thetic in the world, by its expression 
 of sweet human character and life, 
 than that immediately bordering on 
 the sources of the Wandel, and in- 
 cluding the low moors of Addington, 
 and the villages of Beddington and 
 Carshalton, with all their pool and 
 streams. No clearer or diviner wa- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 35 
 
 ters ever sang with constant lips of 
 the hand which "giveth rain from 
 heaven ;" no pastures ever Hghtened 
 in springtime with more passionate 
 blossoming ; no sweeter homes ever 
 hallowed the heart of the passer-by 
 with their pride of peaceful gladness 
 — fain-hidden — yet full-confessed. 
 
 — T/ie Crown of Wild Olive, 
 
 February 6th. 
 It is impossible to calculate the 
 enormous loss of power in modern 
 days, owing to the imperative require- 
 ment that art shall be methodical and 
 learned : for as long as the constitu- 
 tion of this world remains unaltered, 
 there will be more intellect in it than 
 there can be education ; there will be 
 many men capable of just sensation 
 
36 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 and vivid invention, who never will 
 have time to cultivate or polish their 
 natural powers. And all unpolished 
 power is in the present state of society 
 lost ; in other things as well as in the 
 arts, but in the arts especially : nay, 
 in nine cases out of ten, people mis- 
 take the polish for the power. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 February yth. 
 All one's life is a music, if one 
 touches the notes rightly, and in time. 
 But there must be no hurry. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 February 8th. 
 And as the captain of a ship is 
 bound to be the last man to leave the 
 ship in case of wreck, and to share 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 37 
 
 his last crust with the sailors in case 
 of famine, so the manufacturer, in any 
 commercial crisis or distress, is bound 
 to take the suffering of it with the 
 men, and even to take more of it for 
 himself than he allows his men to 
 feel; as a father would in a famine, 
 ship-wreck, or battle, sacrifice himself 
 for his son. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
 February gth. 
 I think that every rightly consti- 
 tuted mind ought to rejoice, not so 
 much in knowing anything clearly, as 
 in feehng that there is infinitely more 
 which it cannot know. None but 
 proud or weak men would mourn over 
 this, for we may always know more, 
 if we choose, by working on ; but the 
 
38 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 pleasure is, I think, to humble people, 
 in knowing that the journey is endless, 
 the treasure inexhaustible, — watching 
 the cloud still march before them with 
 its summitless pillar, and being sure 
 that, to the end of time, and to the 
 length of eternity, the mysteries of its 
 infinity will open farther and farther, 
 their dimness being the sign and nec- 
 essary adjunct of their inexhaustible- 
 ness. 
 
 ^Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 February loth. 
 People are always talking of per- 
 severance, and courage, and fortitude ; 
 but patience is the finest and worthi- 
 est part of fortitude, — and the rarest, 
 too. I know twenty persevering girls 
 for one patient one ; but it is only 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 39 
 
 that twenty-first who can do her work 
 out and out, or enjoy it. For patience 
 Hes at the root of all pleasures, as well 
 as of all powers. Hope herself ceases 
 to be happiness when Impatience com- 
 panions her. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 February nth. 
 All else for which the builders sac- 
 rificed, has passed away — all their liv- 
 ing interests, and aims, and achieve- 
 ments. We know not for what 
 they labored, and we see no evidence 
 of their reward. Victory, wealth, au- 
 thority, happiness — all have departed, 
 though bought by many a bitter sac- 
 rifice. But of them, and their life 
 and their toil upon the earth, one 
 reward, one evidence, is left to us in 
 
40 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 those gray heaps of deep-wrought 
 stone. They have taken with them 
 to the grave their powers, their hon- 
 ors, and their errors ; but they have 
 left us their adoration. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 February 12th. 
 As the Creator of all the worlds, 
 and the Inhabiter of eternity, we can- 
 not behold Him ; but as the Judge 
 of the earth and the Preserver of 
 men, those heavens are indeed His 
 dwelling-place : " Swear not, neither 
 by heaven, for it is God's throne ; 
 ) nor by the earth, for it is His foot- 
 stool ! " And all those passings to 
 and fro of fruitful showers and grate- 
 ful shade, and all those visions of 
 silver palaces built about the hori- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 41 
 
 zon, and voices of moaning winds 
 and threatening thunders, and glories 
 of colored robe and cloven ray, are 
 but to deepen in our hearts the ac- 
 ceptance, and distinctness, and dear- 
 ness of the simple words, " Our 
 Father, which art in heaven." 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 February ijth. 
 Let the accent of words be watched, 
 by all means, but let their meaning be 
 watched more closely still, and fewer 
 will do the work. A few words well 
 chosen and well distinguished, will 
 do the work that a thousand cannot, 
 when every one is acting, equivocally, 
 in the function of another. Yes ; and 
 words, if they are not watched, will 
 do deadly work sometimes. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
42 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 February 14th, 
 What we think, or what we know, 
 or what we beheve, is in the end, of 
 Httle consequence. The only thing 
 of consequence is what we do : and 
 for man, woman or child, the first 
 point of education is to make them 
 do their best. It is the law of good 
 economy to make the best of every- 
 thing. How much more to make 
 the best of every creature ! 
 
 — The Crcnvn of Wild Olive. 
 
 February i^th. 
 It was, indeed, a morning that 
 might have made any one happy, 
 even with no Golden River to seek 
 for. Level lines of dewy mist lay 
 stretched along the valley, out of 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 43 
 
 which rose the massy mountains — 
 their lower cKfFs in pale gray shadow, 
 hardly distinguishable from the float- 
 ing vapor, but gradually ascending 
 till they caught the sunlight, which 
 ran in sharp touches of ruddy color 
 along the angular crags, and pierced, 
 in long level rays, through their 
 fringes of spear-like pine. Far above, 
 shot up red splintered masses of cas- 
 tellated rock, jagged and shivered 
 into myriads of fantastic forms, with 
 here and there a streak of sunlit snow, 
 traced down their chasms like a line 
 of forked lightning ; and, far beyond, 
 and far above all these, fainter than 
 the morning cloud, but purer and 
 changeless, slept, in the blue sky, the 
 utmost peaks of the eternal snow. 
 
 — The King of the Golden River. 
 
44 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 February i6th. 
 Let every man who wishes well to 
 his country, render it yearly an ac- 
 count of his income, and of the main 
 heads of his expenditure ; or, if he is 
 ashamed to do so, let him no more 
 impute to the poor their poverty as 
 a crime, nor set them to break stones 
 in order to frighten them from com- 
 mitting it. To lose money ill is in- 
 deed often a crime ; but to get it ill 
 is a worse one, and to spend it ill, 
 worst of all. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 February lyth. 
 For as religious faith renders emo- 
 tion facile, so also it generally renders 
 expression simple ; that is to say a 
 truly religious painter will very often 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 45 
 
 be ruder, quainter, simpler, and more 
 faulty in his manner of working, than 
 a great irreligious one. And it was 
 in this artless utterance, and simple 
 acceptance, on the part of both the 
 workman and the beholder, that all 
 noble schools of art have been cradled ; 
 it is in them that they must be cradled 
 to the end of time. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 February i8th. 
 You ought to be glad in thinking 
 how much more beauty God has made, 
 than human eyes can ever see ; but 
 not glad in thinking how much more 
 evil man has made, than his own soul 
 can ever conceive, much more than 
 his hands can ever heal. 
 
 —Ethics of the Dust. 
 
46 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 February igth. 
 What is really desired, under the 
 name of riches, is, essentially, power 
 over men ; in its simplest sense, the 
 power of obtaining for our own ad- 
 vantage the labor of servant, trades- 
 man, and artist ; in wider sense, au- 
 thority of directing large masses of 
 the nation to various ends (good, 
 trivial, or hurtful, according to the 
 mind of the rich person). 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
 February 20th, 
 Of all inorganic substances, acting 
 in their own proper nature, and with- 
 out assistance and combination, water 
 is the most wonderful. If we think 
 of it as the source of all the change- 
 fulness and beauty which we have seen 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 47 
 
 in clouds, — then, as the instrument 
 by which the earth we have contem- 
 plated was modelled into symmetry, 
 and its crags chiselled into grace ; — 
 then, as in the form of snow, it robes 
 the mountains it has made with that 
 transcendent light which we could not 
 have conceived if we had not seen ; 
 — then, as it exists in the foam of the 
 torrent, in the iris which spans it, in 
 the morning mist which rises from it, 
 in the deep crystalline pools which 
 mirror its hanging shore, in the broad 
 lake and glancing river ; — finally, in 
 that which is to all human minds the 
 best emblem of unwearied, uncon- 
 querable power, the wild, various, fan- 
 tastic, tameless unity of the sea ; — 
 what shall we compare to this mighty, 
 this universal element, for glory and 
 
48 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 beauty ? or how shall we follow its 
 eternal changefulness of feeling ? 
 
 — Frondes Agresies. 
 
 February 2ist. 
 ^ It is only the fool who does wrong, 
 and says he " did it for the best." 
 And if there's one sort of person in 
 the world that the Bible speaks harder 
 of than another, it is fools. Their par- 
 ticular and chief way of saying " There 
 is no God " is this, of declaring that 
 whatever their " public opinion" may 
 be, is right, and that God's opinion is 
 of no consequence. 
 
 /"N — Ethics of the Dtist. 
 
 February 22d. 
 How difficult must the maintenance 
 of that authority be, which, while it 
 
FROM JOHX RUSKIN 49 
 
 has to restrain the hostilit)' of all the 
 worst principles of man, has also to re- 
 strain the disorders of his best — which 
 is continually assaulted by the one 
 and betrayed by the other, and which 
 regards with the same severity the 
 lightest and the boldest violations of 
 its law ! There are some faults slight 
 in the sight of love, some errors slight 
 in the estimate of wisdom ; but truth 
 forgives no insult, and endures no 
 stain. 
 
 — TA^ Sezen Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 February 2jd. 
 The hills, which, as compared with 
 living beings, seem " everlasting," are 
 in truth as perishing as they ; its veins 
 of flowing fountain weary the moun- 
 tain heart, as the crimson pulse does 
 
50 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 ours ; the natural force of the iron 
 crag is abated in its appointed time, 
 like the strength of the sinews in a 
 human old age ; and it is but the lapse 
 of the longer years of decay which, in 
 the sight of its Creator, distinguishes 
 the mountain range from the moth 
 and the worm. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 February 2^th 
 We talk of food for the mind, as of 
 food for the body : now a good book 
 contains such food inexhaustibly ; it is 
 a provision for life, and for the best 
 part of us ; yet how long most people 
 would look at the best book before 
 they would give the price of a large 
 turbot for it ! 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 51 
 
 February 2^th. 
 No teacher can truly promote the 
 cause of education, until he knows the 
 mode of life for which that education 
 is to prepare his pupil. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 February 26th. 
 The likeness to a beloved friend, 
 the correspondence with a habitual 
 conception, the freedom from any 
 strange or offensive particularity, and, 
 above all, an interesting choice of in- 
 cident, will win admiration for a pic- 
 ture when the noblest efforts of re- 
 ligious imagination would otherwise 
 fail of power. How much more, 
 when to the quick capacity of emo- 
 tion is joined a childish trust that the 
 picture does indeed represent a fact ! 
 
52 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 It matters little whether the fact be 
 well or ill told ; the moment we be- 
 lieve the picture to be true, we com- 
 plain little of its being ill-painted. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 February 2jth. 
 No one can be forced to do a 
 wrong thing, for the guilt is in the 
 will ; but you may any day be forced 
 to do a fatal thing, as you might be 
 forced to take poison ; the remarka- 
 ble law of nature in such cases being, 
 that it is always unfortunate jy^« who 
 are poisoned, and not the person who 
 gives you the dose. It is a very 
 strange law, but it is a law. Nature 
 merely sees to the carrying out of 
 the normal operation of arsenic. She 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 53 
 
 never troubles herself to ask who 
 gave it you. So also you may be 
 starved to death, morally as well as 
 physically, by other people's faults. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 February 28th. 
 It would be as absurd to think it 
 an evil that all the world is not fit 
 for us to inhabit, as to think it an 
 evil that the globe is no larger than 
 it is. As much as we shall ever need 
 is evidently assigned to us for our 
 dwelling-place ; the rest, covered 
 with rolHng waves or drifting sands, 
 fretted with ice or crested with fire, 
 is set before us for contemplation in 
 an uninhabitable magnificence. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes, 
 
5i BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 February 2gth, 
 There is also a confused notion in 
 the minds of many persons, that the 
 gathering of the property of the poor 
 into the hands of the rich does no ul- 
 timate harm ; since, in whosesoever 
 hands it may be, it must be spent at 
 last, and thus, they think, return to 
 the poor again. This fallacy has 
 been again and again exposed ; but 
 granting the plea true the same apol- 
 ogy may, of course, be made for 
 blackmail, or any other form of rob- 
 bery. It might be (though practi- 
 cally it never is) as advantageous for 
 the nation that the robber should 
 have the spending of the money he 
 extorts, as that the person robbed 
 should have spent it. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive, 
 
MARCH 
 
March 1st. 
 Men must either hereafter live, or 
 hereafter die ; fate may be bravely 
 met, and conduct wisely ordered, on 
 either expectation ; but never in hes- 
 itation between ungrasped hope, and 
 unconfronted fear. We usually be- 
 lieve in immortality, so far as to avoid 
 preparation for anything after death. 
 Whereas, a wise man will at least 
 hold himself ready for one or other 
 of two events, of which one or other 
 is inevitable ; and will have all things 
 ended in order for his sleep, or left 
 in order for his awakening. 
 
 — The Crown of IVild Olive, 
 
58 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 March 2d, 
 When he had climbed for an hour, 
 he got dreadfully thirsty, and was 
 going to drink like his brothers, 
 when he saw an old man coming 
 down the path above him, looking 
 very feeble, and leaning on a staff. 
 " My son," said the old man, " I am 
 faint with thirst, give me some of 
 that water." Then Gluck looked at 
 him, and when he saw that he was 
 pale and weary, he gave him the 
 water ; " Only pray don't drink it 
 all," said Gluck. But the old man 
 drank a great deal, and gave him 
 back the bottle two-thirds empty. 
 Then he bade him good speed, and 
 Gluck went on again merrily. And 
 the path became easier to his feet, 
 and two or three blades of grass ap- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 59 
 
 peared upon it, and some grass- 
 hoppers began singing on the bank 
 beside it ; and Gluck thought he had 
 never heard such merry singing. 
 
 — T^e Kmg of the Golden River. 
 
 March jd. 
 Thus, it is a creed with a great 
 part of the existing English people, 
 that they are in possession of a book 
 which tells them, straight from the 
 lips of God, all they ought to do, 
 and need to know. I have read that 
 book, with as much care as most of 
 them, for some forty years ; and am 
 thankful that, on those who trust it, 
 I can press its pleadings. My en- 
 deavor has been uniformly to make 
 them trust it more deeply than they 
 do ; trust it, not in their own favorite 
 
60 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 verses only, but in the sum of all ; 
 trust it not as a fetish or talisman, 
 which they are to be saved by daily 
 repetitions of; but as Captain's order, 
 to be heard and obeyed at their 
 peril. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 March 4th, 
 Do you think that your goodness 
 comes all by your own contriving ? 
 or that you are gentle and kind be- 
 cause your dispositions are naturally 
 more angelic than those of the poor 
 girls who are playing, with wild eyes, 
 on the dust-heaps in the alleys of our 
 great towns ; and who will one day 
 fill their prisons, or, better, their 
 graves ? Heaven only knows where 
 they, and we who have cast them 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 61 
 
 there, shall stand at last. But the 
 main judgment question will be, I 
 suppose, for all of us, " Did you keep 
 a good heart through it ? " What 
 you were, others may answer for ; 
 what you tried to be, you must an- 
 swer for yourself Was the heart 
 pure and true ? tell us that. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 March ^th. 
 We are too much in the habit of 
 looking at falsehood in its darkest as- 
 sociations, and through the color of 
 its worst purposes. That indignation 
 which we profess to feel at deceit ab- 
 solute, is indeed only at deceit mali- 
 cious. We resent calumny, hypocrisy, 
 and treachery, because they harm us, 
 not because they are untrue. Take 
 
62 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 the detraction and the mischief from 
 the untruth, and we are Httle offended 
 by it ; turn it into praise, and we may 
 be pleased with it. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 March 6th. 
 We take our idea of fearlessness 
 and sublimity alternately from the 
 mountains and the sea ; but we asso- 
 ciate them unjustly. The sea-wave, 
 with all its beneficence, is yet devour- 
 ing and terrible ; but the silent wave 
 of the blue mountain is lifted towards 
 heaven in a stillness of perpetual 
 mercy ; and the one surge, unfathom- 
 able in its darkness, the other un- 
 shaken in its faithfulness, forever bear 
 the seal of their appointed symbolism : 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 63 
 
 " Thy righteousness is like the great 
 mountains ; 
 
 ^^ Thy judgments are a great deep." 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 March yth. 
 Though there have been men who 
 have pinched their stomachs and bared 
 their backs to buy a book, whose 
 libraries were cheaper to them, I think, 
 in the end, than most men's dinners 
 are. We are few of us put to such 
 trial, and more the pity ; for, indeed, 
 a precious thing is all the more 
 precious to us if it has been won by 
 work or economy ; and if public li- 
 braries were half as costly as public 
 dinners, or books cost the tenth part 
 of what bracelets do, even foolish men 
 
66 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 deed find yourself to be in any wise 
 any of these. Take steady means to 
 check yourself in whatever fault you 
 have ascertained, and justly accused 
 yourself of And as soon as you are 
 in active way of mending, you will be 
 no more inclined to moan over an un- 
 defined corruption. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 March loth. 
 Mountains are to the rest of the 
 body of the earth what violent mus- 
 cular action is to the body of man. 
 The muscles and tendons of its anat- 
 omy are, in the mountain, brought 
 out with force and convulsive en- 
 ergy, full of expression, passion, and 
 strength ; the plains and the lower 
 
FROM JOHN RVSKIN 67 
 
 hills are the repose and the effortless 
 motion of the frame, when its muscles 
 lie dormant and concealed beneath 
 the lines of its beauty, — yet ruling 
 those lines in their every undula- 
 tion. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 March nth, 
 I have been long accustomed, as 
 all men engaged in work of investi- 
 gation must be, to hear my state- 
 ments laughed at for years before 
 they are examined or believed ; and 
 I am generally content to wait the 
 public's time. But it has not been 
 without displeased surprise that I 
 have found myself totally unable, as 
 yet, by any repetition, or illustration, 
 
68 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 to force this plain thought into my 
 readers' heads, — that the wealth of 
 nations, as of men, consists in sub- 
 stance, not in ciphers ; and that the 
 real good of all work, and of all com- 
 merce, depends on the final intrinsic 
 worth of the thing you make, or get 
 by it, 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 March 1 2 th. 
 Do not think of your faults, still 
 less of others' faults. In every per- 
 son who comes near you, look for 
 what is good and strong ; honor that, 
 rejoice in it, and, as you can, try to 
 imitate it, and your faults will drop 
 off like dead leaves, when their time 
 comes. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 69 
 
 March 13th, 
 I do not mean to diminish the 
 blame of the injurious and malicious 
 sin, of the selfish and deliberate falsity ; 
 yet it seems to me, that the shortest 
 way to check the darker forms of de- 
 ceit is to set watch more scrupulous 
 against those which have mingled un- 
 regarded and unchastised with the 
 current of our life. Do not let us lie 
 at all. Do not think of one falsity as 
 harmless, and another as slight, and 
 another as unintended. Cast them all 
 aside : they may be light and acci- 
 dental ; but they are an ugly soot from 
 the smoke of the pit, for all that ; and 
 it is better that our hearts should be 
 swept clean of them, without over care 
 as to which is largest or blackest. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps 0/ Architecture. 
 
68 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 to force this plain thought into my 
 readers' heads, — that the wealth of 
 nations, as of men, consists in sub- 
 stance, not in ciphers ; and that the 
 real good of all work, and of all com- 
 merce, depends on the final intrinsic 
 worth of the thing you make, or get 
 by it. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 March 12th. 
 Do not think of your faults, still 
 less of others' faults. In every per- 
 son who comes near you, look for 
 what is good and strong ; honor that, 
 rejoice in it, and, as you can, try to 
 imitate it, and your faults will drop 
 off like dead leaves, when their time 
 comes. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust, 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 69 
 
 March ijth. 
 I do not mean to diminish the 
 blame of the injurious and maHcious 
 sin, of the selfish and deliberate falsity ; 
 yet it seems to me, that the shortest 
 way to check the darker forms of de- 
 ceit is to set watch more scrupulous 
 against those which have mingled un- 
 regarded and unchastised with the 
 current of our life. Do not let us lie 
 at all. Do not think of one falsity as 
 harmless, and another as slight, and 
 another as unintended. Cast them all 
 aside : they may be light and acci- 
 dental ; but they are an ugly soot from 
 the smoke of the pit, for all that ; and 
 it is better that our hearts should be 
 swept clean of them, without over care 
 as to which is largest or blackest. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
70 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 March 14th, 
 The greater part of the profitable 
 investment of capital, in the present 
 day, is in operations of this kind, in 
 which the public is persuaded to buy 
 something of no use to it, on produc- 
 tion or sale of which the capitalist 
 may charge percentage ; the said pub- 
 lic remaining all the while under the 
 persuasion that the percentages thus 
 obtained are real national gains, 
 whereas, they are merely filchings out 
 of partially light pockets, to swell 
 heavy ones. 
 
 — The Crmvn of Wild Olive. 
 \ 
 
 March i^th. 
 There are no natural objects out of 
 which more can be learned than out 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 71 
 
 of Stones. They seem to have been 
 created especially to reward a patient 
 observer. Nearly all other objects in 
 nature can be seen to some extent 
 without patience, and are pleasant 
 even in being half seen. Trees, 
 clouds, and rivers are enjoyable even 
 by the careless ; but the stone under 
 his foot has, for carelessness, nothing 
 in it but stumbling ; no pleasure is 
 languidly to be had out of it, nor 
 food, nor good of any kind ; nothing 
 but symbolism of the hard heart, and 
 the unfatherly gift. And yet, do but 
 give it some reverence and watchful- 
 ness, and there is bread of thought in 
 it, more than in any other lowly fea- 
 ture of all the landscape. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
72 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 March i6th. 
 The more I have examined the 
 subject the more dangerous I have 
 found it to dogmatize respecting the 
 character of the art which is likely, 
 at a given period, to be most useful 
 to the cause of religion. One great 
 fact first meets me. I cannot answer 
 for the experience of others, but I 
 never yet met with a Christian whose 
 heart was thoroughly set upon the 
 world to come, and, so far as human 
 judgment could pronounce, perfect 
 and right before God, who cared 
 about art at all. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 March lyth. 
 If, on looking back, your whole 
 life should seem rugged as a palm-tree 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 73 
 
 Stem ; still, never mind, so long as it 
 has been growing, and has its grand 
 green shade of leaves and weight of 
 honeyed fruit at top. And even if 
 you cannot find much good in your- 
 self at last, think that it does not 
 much matter to the universe either 
 what you were, or are ; think how 
 many people are noble, if you cannot 
 be, and rejoice in fheir nobleness. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 March i8th. 
 As we pass between the hills which 
 have been shaken by earthquake and 
 torn by convulsion, we find that 
 periods of perfect repose succeed 
 those of destruction. The pools of 
 calm water lie clear beneath their 
 fallen rocks, the water-HHes gleam, 
 
74 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 and the reeds whisper among their 
 shadows ; the village rises again over 
 the forgotten graves, and its church 
 tower, white through the storm-light, 
 proclaims a renewed appeal to His 
 protection in whose hand " are all 
 the corners of the earth, and the 
 strength of the hills is His also." 
 There is no loveliness of Alpine val- 
 ley that does not teach the same les- 
 son. It is just where " the mountain 
 falling Cometh to nought, and the 
 rock is removed out of his place," 
 that in process of years the fairest 
 meadows bloom between the frag- 
 ments, the clearest rivulets murmur 
 from between their crevices among 
 the flowers, and the clustered cot- 
 tages, each sheltered beneath some 
 strength of mossy stone, now to be 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 75 
 
 removed no more, and with their 
 pastured flocks around them, safe 
 from the eagle's stoop and the wolf's 
 ravin, have written upon their fronts, 
 in simple words, the mountain's faith 
 in the ancient promise, — " Neither 
 shalt thou be afraid of destruction, 
 when it cometh ; for thou shalt be in 
 league with the stones of the field, 
 and the beasts of the field shall be at 
 peace with thee." 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 March igth. 
 You can know what you are only 
 by looking out of yourself Measure 
 your own powers with those of 
 others ; compare your own interests 
 with those of others ; try to under- 
 stand what you appear to them, as 
 
76 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 well as what they appear to you ; and 
 judge of yourselves, in all things, 
 relatively and sub-ordinately, not pos- 
 itively ; starting always with a whole- 
 some conviction of the probability 
 that there is nothing particular about 
 you. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 March 20th. 
 To speak and act truth with con- 
 stancy and precision is nearly as diffi- 
 cult, and perhaps as meritorious, as 
 to speak it under intimidation or 
 penalty ; and it is a strange thought 
 how many men there are, as I trust, 
 who would hold to it at the cost of 
 fortune or life, for one who would 
 hold to it at the cost of a little daily 
 trouble. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 77 
 
 March 2ist. 
 Wonderful, in universal adaptation 
 to man's need, desire, and discipline, 
 God's daily preparation of the earth 
 for him, with beautiful means of life. 
 First, a carpet, to make it soft for 
 him ; then a colored fantasy of em- 
 broidery thereon ; then, tall spread- 
 ing of foliage to shade him from sun- 
 heat, and shade also the fallen rain, 
 that it may not dry quickly back into 
 the clouds, but stay to nourish the 
 springs among the moss. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 March 22d. 
 
 I observe that men of business 
 
 rarely know the meaning of the word 
 
 " rich." At least, if they know, they 
 
 do not in their reasonings allow for 
 
78 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 the fact that it is a relative word, im- 
 plying its opposite " poor " as posi- 
 tively as the word " north " implies 
 its opposite " south." Men nearly 
 always speak and write as if riches 
 were absolute, and it were possible, 
 by following certain scientific pre- 
 cepts, for everybody to be rich. 
 Whereas riches are a power like that 
 of electricity, acting only through in- 
 equalities or negations of itself The 
 force of the guinea you have in your 
 pocket depends wholly on the de- 
 fault of a guinea in your neighbor*s 
 pocket. If he did not want it, it 
 would be of no use to you ; the de- 
 gree of power it possesses depends 
 accurately upon the need or desire 
 he has for it — and the art of making 
 yourself rich, in the ordinary mercan- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 79 
 
 tile economist's sense, is therefore 
 equally and necessarily the art of 
 keeping your neighbor poor. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
 March 2jd. 
 Thus the Renaissance manner of 
 building is a convenient style for 
 dwelling-houses, but the natural sense 
 of all religious men causes them to 
 turn from it with pain when it has 
 been used in churches ; and this has 
 given rise to the popular idea that 
 the Roman style is good for houses 
 and the Gothic for churches. This 
 is not so ; the Roman style is essen- 
 tially base, and we can bear with it 
 only so long as it gives us conven- 
 ient windows and spacious rooms ; the 
 moment the question of convenience 
 
80 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 is set aside, and the expression or 
 beauty of the style is tried by its be- 
 ing used in a church, we find it fails. 
 But because the Gothic and Byzan- 
 tine styles are fit for churches they 
 are not therefore less fit for dwellings. 
 
 — Stones of Venice, 
 
 March 24th. 
 So, something which befalls you 
 may seem a great misfortune ; you 
 meditate over its effects on you per- 
 sonally, and begin to think that it is 
 a chastisement, or a warning, or a this 
 or that or the other of profound sig- 
 nificance, and that all the angels in 
 heaven have left their business for 
 a little while that they may watch 
 its effects on your mind. But give 
 up this egotistic indulgence of your 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 81 
 
 fancy ; examine a little what misfor- 
 tunes, greater a thousandfold, are 
 happening every second to twenty 
 times worthier persons, and your self- 
 consciousness will change into pity 
 and humility, and you will know your- 
 self, so far as to understand that " there 
 hath nothing taken thee but what is 
 common to man." 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 March 2^th. 
 If ever in autumn a pensiveness 
 falls upon us, as the leaves drift by 
 in their fading, may we not wisely 
 look up in hope to their mighty mon- 
 uments ? Behold how fair, how far 
 prolonged in arch and aisle, the av- 
 enues of the valleys, the fringes of the 
 hills ! so stately, — so eternal ; the joy 
 
82 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 of man, the comfort of all living 
 creatures, the glory of the earth, — 
 they are but the monuments of those 
 poor leaves that flit faintly past us to 
 die. Let them not pass, without our 
 understanding their last counsel and 
 example : that we also, careless of 
 monument by the grave, may build 
 it in the world — monument by which 
 men may be taught to remember, not 
 where we died, but where we lived. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes, 
 
 March 26th, 
 No book is worth anything which 
 is not worth much ; nor is it servicable, 
 until it has been read, and reread, and 
 loved, and loved again ; and marked, 
 so that you can refer to passages you 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 83 
 
 want in it, as a soldier can seize the 
 weapon he needs in an armory, or a 
 housewife bring the spice she needs 
 from her store. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 March 2yth. 
 And for all of us, the question is 
 not at all to ascertain how much or 
 how little corruption there is in hu- 
 man nature, but to ascertain whether, 
 out of all the mass of that nature, we 
 are of the sheep or the goat breed ; 
 whether we are people of upright 
 heart, being shot at, or people of 
 crooked heart, shooting. And of all 
 the texts bearing on the subject, this, 
 which is a quite simple and practical 
 order, is the one you have chiefly to 
 hold in mind. " Keep thy heart with 
 
84 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 all diligence, for out of it are the is- 
 sues of life.'* 
 
 —Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 March 28th, 
 Speaking truth is like writing fair, 
 and comes only by practice ; it is less 
 a matter of will than of habit, and I 
 doubt if any occasion can be trivial 
 which permits the practice and forma- 
 tion of such a habit. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 March 2gth. 
 Flowers seem intended for the sol- 
 ace of ordinary humanity : children 
 love them ; quiet, contented, ordinary 
 people love them as they grow ; lux- 
 urious and disorderly people rejoice 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 85 
 
 in them gathered ; they are the cot- 
 tager's treasure ; and in the crowded 
 town, mark, as with a little broken 
 fragment of rainbow, the windows of 
 the workers in whose hearts rests the 
 covenant of peace. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 March joth. 
 Inequalities of wealth, unjustly es- 
 tablished, have assuredly injured the 
 nation in which they exist during 
 their establishment ; and, unjustly 
 directed, injure it yet more during 
 their existence. But inequalities of 
 wealth, justly established, benefit the 
 nation in the course of their estab- 
 lishment ; and, nobly used, aid it yet 
 more by their existence. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
86 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 March Jist, 
 Bread of flour is good : but there 
 is bread, sweet as honey, if we would 
 eat it, in a good book ; and the fam- 
 ily must be poor indeed which, once 
 in their lives, cannot, for such multi- 
 pliable barley-loaves, pay their baker's 
 bill. We call ourselves a rich nation, 
 and we are filthy and foolish enough 
 to thumb each other's books out of 
 circulating libraries ! 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
APRIL 
 
April 1st. 
 Just as there are many principles 
 which will bear the light of the world's 
 opinion, yet will not bear the light of 
 God's word, while all principles which 
 will bear the test of Scripture will also 
 bear that of practice, so in architecture 
 there are many forms which expedi- 
 ency and convenience may apparently 
 justify, or at least render endurable, 
 in daily use, which will yet be found 
 offensive the moment they are used 
 for church service ; but there are none 
 good for church service, which can- 
 not bear daily use. 
 
 — Stones of Venice, 
 
90 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 April 2d, 
 I mean, and always have meant, 
 simply this, — that the will of God re- 
 specting us is that we shall live by 
 each other's happiness and life, not 
 by each other's misery or death. I 
 made you read that verse which so 
 shocked you just now, because the 
 relations of parent and child are typ- 
 ical of all beautiful human help. A 
 child may have to die for its parents ; 
 but the purpose of Heaven is that it 
 shall live for them ; that, not by its 
 sacrifice, but by its strength, its joy, 
 its force of being, it shall be to them 
 renewal of strength, and as the arrow 
 in the hand of the giant. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 91 
 
 April jd. 
 Perhaps few people have ever asked 
 themselves why they admire a rose so 
 much more than all other flowers. 
 If they consider, they will find, first, 
 that red is, in a delicately gradated 
 state, the loveliest of all pure colors ; 
 and, secondly, that in the rose there 
 is no shadow^ except what is composed 
 of color. All its shadows are fuller 
 in color than its lights, owing to the 
 translucency and reflective power of 
 the leaves. 
 
 — Frondes Agresies. 
 
 April 4th, 
 When men are rightly occupied, 
 their amusement grows out of their 
 work, as the color-petals out of a 
 
92 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 fruitful flower ; — when they are faith- 
 fully helpful and compassionate, all 
 their emotions become steady, deep, 
 perpetual, and vivifying to the soul 
 as the natural pulse to the body. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 April ^th. 
 Wilful error is limited by the will, 
 but what limit is there to that of which 
 we are unconscious ? 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 April 6th, 
 
 Men help each other by their joy, 
 
 not by their sorrow. They are not 
 
 intended to slay themselves for each 
 
 other, but to strengthen themselves 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 93 
 
 for each other. And among the 
 many apparently beautiful things 
 which turn, through mistaken use, to 
 utter evil, I am not sure but that the 
 thoughtlessly meek and self-sacrific- 
 ing spirit of good men must be named 
 as one of the fatalest. They have so 
 often been taught that there is a vir- 
 tue in mere suffering, as such, and 
 foolishly to hope that good may be 
 brought by Heaven out of all on 
 which Heaven itself has set the stamp 
 of evil, that we may avoid it, that 
 they accept pain and defeat as if these 
 were their appointed portion ; never 
 understanding that their defeat is not 
 the less to be mourned because it is 
 more fatal to their enemies than to 
 them. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
94 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 April yth. 
 It is necessary to our rank as spir- 
 itual creatures, that we should be able 
 to invent and to behold what is not ; 
 and to our rank as moral creatures, 
 that we should know and confess at 
 the same time that it is not. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 April 8th, 
 The whole question, therefore, re- 
 specting not only the advantage, but 
 even the quantity, of national wealth, 
 resolves itself finally into one of ab- 
 stract justice. It is impossible to 
 conclude, of any given mass of ac- 
 quired wealth, merely by the fact of 
 its existence, whether it signifies good 
 or evil to the nation in the midst of 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 95 
 
 which it exists. Its real value de- 
 pends on the moral sign attached to 
 it, just as sternly as that of a mathe- 
 matical quantity depends on the alge- 
 braical sign attached to it. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
 April gth. 
 For indeed the fact is, that there are 
 idle poor and idle rich ; and there are 
 busy poor and busy rich. Many a 
 beggar is as lazy as if he had ten thou- 
 sand a year ; and many a man of large 
 fortune ib busier than his errand-boy, 
 and never would think of stopping in 
 the street to play marbles. So that, 
 in a large view, the distinction be- 
 tween workers and idlers, as between 
 knaves and honest men, runs through 
 
96 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 the very heart and innermost nature 
 of men of all ranks and in all posi- 
 tions. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 April loth. 
 There is no sacredness in round 
 arches, nor in pointed ; none in pin- 
 nacles, nor in buttresses ; none in pil- 
 lars, nor traceries. Churches were 
 larger than most other buildings, 
 because they had to hold more peo- 
 ple ; they were more adorned than 
 most other buildings, because they 
 were safer from violence, and were 
 the fitting subjects of devotional of- 
 fering : but they were never built in 
 any separate, mystical, and religious 
 style ; they were built in the manner 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 97 
 
 that was common and familiar to 
 everybody at the time. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 April nth. 
 The one thing that a good man 
 has to do, and to see done, is justice ; 
 he is neither to slay himself nor oth- 
 ers carelessly : so far from denying 
 himself, since he is pleased by good, 
 he is to do his utmost to get his 
 pleasure accomplished. 
 
 —Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 April I2th, 
 There is a curious type of us given 
 in one of the lovely, neglected works 
 of the last of our great painters. It 
 is a drawing of Kirkby Lonsdale 
 churchyard, and of its brook, and 
 
98 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 valley, and hills, and folded morning 
 sky beyond. And unmindful alike 
 of these, and of the dead who have 
 left these for other valleys and for 
 other skies, a group of schoolboys 
 have piled their little books upon a 
 grave, to strike them off with stones. 
 So do we play with the words of the 
 dead that would teach us, and strike 
 them far from us with our bitter, reck- 
 less will, Httle thinking that those 
 leaves which the wind scatters had 
 been piled, not only upon a grave- 
 stone, but upon the seal of an en- 
 chanted vault — nay, the gate of a 
 great city of sleeping kings, who 
 would awake for us, and walk with 
 us, if we knew but how to call them 
 by their names. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 99 
 
 April IJth. 
 Gather a single blade of grass, 
 and examine for a minute quietly its 
 narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted 
 green. Nothing, as it seems, there 
 of notable goodness or beauty. A 
 very little strength and a very little 
 tallness, and a few delicate long Hnes 
 meeting in a point, — not a perfect 
 point neither, but blunt and unfin- 
 ished, by no means a creditable or 
 apparently much-cared-for example 
 of Nature's workmanship, made, 
 only to be trodden on to-day, and 
 to-morrow to be cast into the oven, — 
 and a little pale and hollow stalk, fee- 
 ble and flaccid, leading down to the 
 dull brown fibres of roots. And yet, 
 think of it well, and judge whether, 
 of all the gorgeous flowers that beam 
 
100 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 in summer air, and of all strong and 
 goodly trees, pleasant to the eyes, or 
 good for food, — stately palm and pine, 
 strong ash and oak, scented citron, 
 burdened vine — there be any by man 
 so deeply loved, by God so highly 
 graced, as that narrow point of feeble 
 green. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 April 14th, 
 In the daily course and discipline 
 of right life, we must continually and 
 reciprocally submit and surrender in 
 all kind and courteous and affection- 
 ate ways ; and these submissions and 
 ministries to each other, of which you 
 all know (none better) the practice 
 and the preciousness, are as good for 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 101 
 
 the yielder as the receiver ; they 
 strengthen and perfect as much as 
 they soften and refine. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 April i^th. 
 In recalling the impressions we 
 have received from the works of man, 
 after a lapse of time long enough to 
 involve in obscurity all but the most 
 vivid, it often happens that we find a 
 strange pre-eminence and durability 
 in many upon whose strength we had 
 little calculated, and that points of 
 character which had escaped the de- 
 tection of the judgment, become de- 
 veloped under the waste of memory ; 
 as veins of harder rock, whose places 
 could not at first have been dis- 
 
102 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 covered by the eye, are left salient 
 under the action of frosts and streams. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 April i6th. 
 Any given accumulation of com- 
 mercial wealth may be indicative, on 
 the one hand, of faithful industries, 
 progressive energies, and productive 
 ingenuities : or, on the other, it may 
 be indicative of mortal luxury, mer- 
 ciless tyranny, ruinous chicane. Some 
 treasures are heavy with human tears, 
 as an ill-stored harvest with untimely 
 rain ; and some gold is brighter in 
 sunshine than it is in substance. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
 April lyth. 
 He only is advancing in life, whose 
 heart is getting softer, whose blood 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 103 
 
 warmer, whose brain quicker, whose 
 spirit is entering into Living peace. 
 And the men who have this life in 
 them are the true lords or kings of 
 the earth — they, and they only. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 April i8th. 
 There is a working class — strong 
 and happy, — among both rich and 
 poor ; there is an idle class — weak, 
 wicked, and miserable, — among both 
 rich and poor. And the worst of the 
 misunderstandings arising between the 
 two orders come of the unlucky fact 
 that the wise of one class [how little 
 wise in this !] habitually contemplate 
 the foolish of the other. If the busy 
 rich people watched and rebuked the 
 idle rich people, all would be right 
 
104 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 among them : and if the busy poor 
 people watched and rebuked the idle 
 poor people, all would be right among 
 them. But each looks for the faults 
 of the other. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 April igth. 
 We have destroyed the goodly 
 architecture of our cities ; we have 
 substituted one wholly devoid of 
 beauty or meaning; and then we 
 reason respecting the strange effect 
 upon our minds of the fragments 
 which, fortunately, we have left in 
 our churches, as if those churches 
 had always been designed to stand 
 out in strong relief from all the 
 buildings around them, and Gothic 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 105 
 
 architecture had always been, what it 
 is now, a religious language, like 
 Monkish Latin. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 April 20th. 
 Briefly, the constant duty of every 
 man to his fellows is to ascertain his 
 own powers and special gifts, and to 
 strengthen them for the help of 
 others. Do you think Titian would 
 have helped the world better by de- 
 nying himself, and not painting ; or 
 Casella by denying himself, and not 
 singing ! 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 April 2 1 St. 
 Go out in the springtime among 
 the meadows that slope from the 
 
106 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 shores of the Swiss lakes to the roots 
 of their lower mountains. There, 
 mingled with the taller gentians, and 
 the white narcissus, the grass grows 
 deep and free ; and as you follow 
 the winding mountain path, beneath 
 arching boughs, all veiled with blos- 
 som — paths that forever droop and 
 rise over the green banks and 
 mounds sweeping down in scented 
 undulation steep to the blue water, 
 studded here and there with new- 
 mown heaps filling all the air with 
 fainter sweetness, — look up towards 
 the higher hills, where the waves of 
 everlasting green roll silently into 
 their long inlets among the shadows 
 of the pines ; and we may perhaps at 
 last know the meaning of those quiet 
 words of the 147th Psalm, " He ma- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 107 
 
 keth grass to grow upon the moun- 
 tains." 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 April 2 2d. 
 I want you to feel, with me, that 
 whatever advantages we possess in 
 the present day in the diffusion of 
 education and of Hterature, can only 
 be rightly used by any of us when we 
 have apprehended clearly what edu- 
 cation is to lead to, and literature to 
 teach. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 April 2jd. 
 You ladies like to lead the fash- 
 ion : — by all means lead it — lead it 
 thoroughly, — lead it far enough. 
 Dress yourselves nicely, and dress 
 
108 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 everybody else nicely. Lead the 
 fashions for the poor first ; make 
 them look well, and you yourselves 
 will look, in ways of which you have 
 now no conception, all the better. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 April 24th. 
 There is but one way in which 
 man can ever help God — that is, by 
 letting God help him ; and there is 
 no way in which His name is more 
 guiltily taken in vain, than by calling 
 the abandonment of our own work 
 the performance of His. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 April 2^th. 
 All building, therefore, shows man 
 either as gathering or governing ; and 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 109 
 
 the secrets of his success are his 
 knowing what to gather, and how to 
 rule. These are the two great in- 
 tellectual Lamps of Architecture ; 
 the one consisting in a just and hum- 
 ble veneration for the works of God 
 upon the earth, and the other in an 
 understanding of the dominion over 
 those works which has been vested in 
 man. 
 
 — TAe Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 April 26th. 
 The most helpful and sacred work 
 which can at present be done for hu- 
 manity, is to teach people (chiefly by 
 example, as all best teaching must be 
 done) not how " to better them- 
 selves," but how to " satisfy them- 
 selves." It is the curse of every evil 
 
110 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 nature and evil creature to eat and 
 not be satisfied. The words of bless- 
 ing are, that they shall eat and be 
 satisfied ; and as there is only one 
 kind of water which quenches all 
 thirst, so there is only one kind of 
 bread which satisfies all hunger — the 
 bread of justice or righteousness ; 
 which hungering after, men shall al- 
 ways be filled, that being the bread 
 of Heaven ; but hungering after the 
 bread or wages of unrighteousness, 
 shall not be filled, that being the 
 bread of Sodom. 
 
 — Frondes Agresles. 
 
 April 2yth. 
 So far as I know, there is not in 
 history record of anything so dis- 
 graceful to the human intellect as the 
 
FROM JOHN RVSKIN 111 
 
 modern idea that the commercial 
 text, " Buy in the cheapest market 
 and sell in the dearest," represents, 
 or under any circumstances could rep- 
 resent, an available principle of na- 
 tional economy. Buy in the cheap- 
 est market ? — yes ; but what made 
 your market cheap ? Charcoal may 
 be cheap among your roof timbers 
 after a fire, and bricks may be cheap 
 in your streets after an earthquake ; 
 but fire and earthquake may not 
 therefore be national benefits. Sell 
 in the dearest ? — yes, truly ; but what 
 made your market dear ? You sold 
 your bread well to-day : was it to a 
 dying man who gave his last coin for 
 it, and will never need bread more ; 
 or to a rich man who to-morrow will 
 buy your farm over your head ; or to 
 
112 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 a soldier on his way to pillage the 
 bank in which you have put your 
 fortune ? 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
 April 28th. 
 We attach, in modern days, a kind 
 of sacredness to the pointed arch and 
 the groined roof, because, while we 
 look habitually out of square windows 
 and live under flat ceilings, we meet 
 with the more beautiful forms in the 
 ruins of our abbeys. But when those 
 abbeys were built, the pointed arch 
 was used for every shop door, as well 
 as for that of the cloister, and the 
 feudal baron and freebooter feasted, 
 as the monk sang, under vaulted 
 roofs ; not because the vaulting was 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 113 
 
 thought especially appropriate to 
 either the revel or psalm, but because 
 it was then the form in which a strong 
 roof was easiest built. 
 
 — stones of Venice. 
 
 April 2gth. 
 God is a kind Father. He sets us 
 all in the places where He wishes us 
 to be employed ; and that employ- 
 ment is truly " our Father's business." 
 He chooses work for every creature 
 which will be delightful to them, if 
 they do it simply and humbly. He 
 gives us always strength enough, and 
 sense enough, for what He wants us 
 to do ; if we either tire ourselves or 
 puzzle ourselves, it is ourselves, it is 
 our own fault. And we may always 
 
114 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 be sure, whatever we are doing, that 
 we cannot be pleasing Him, if we are 
 not happy ourselves. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 April jot h. 
 We cannot determine what the 
 queenly power of women should be, 
 until we are agreed what their ordi- 
 nary power should be. We cannot 
 consider how education may fit them 
 for any widely extending duty, until 
 we are agreed what is their true con- 
 stant duty. And there never was a 
 time when wilder words were spoken, 
 or more vain imagination permitted, 
 respecting this question— quite vital 
 to all social happiness. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
MAY 
 
May 1st. 
 Men will be taught that an exist- 
 ence of play, sustained by the blood 
 of other creatures, is a good existence 
 for gnats and jelly-fish ; but not for 
 men : that neither days, nor lives, 
 can be made holy or noble by doing 
 nothing in them : that the best prayer 
 at the beginning of a day is that we 
 may not lose its moments ; and the 
 best grace before meat, the conscious- 
 ness that we have justly earned our 
 dinner. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 May 2d, 
 All the world is but as one orphan- 
 age, so long as its children know not 
 
118 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 God their Father; and all wisdom 
 and knowledge is only more bewil- 
 dered darkness, so long as you have 
 not taught them the fear of the Lord. 
 
 — Fors Clavigera. 
 
 May jd. 
 The essential idea of real virtue 
 is that of a vital human strength, 
 which instinctively, constantly, and 
 without motive does what is right. 
 You must train men to this by habit, 
 as you would the branch of a tree; 
 and give them instincts and manners 
 (or morals) of purity, justice, kind- 
 ness, and courage. Once rightly 
 trained, they act as they should, ir- 
 respectively of all motive, of fear, or 
 of reward. It is the blackest sign 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 119 
 
 of putrescence in a national religion 
 when men speak as if it were the only- 
 safeguard of conduct, and assume 
 that, but for the fear of being burned, 
 or for the hope of being rewarded, 
 everybody would pass their lives in 
 lying, stealing, and murdering. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 May 4th. 
 In the edifices of Man there should 
 be found reverent worship and fol- 
 lowing, not only of the spirit which 
 rounds the pillars of the forest, and 
 arches the vault of the avenue — which 
 gives veining to the leaf, and polish 
 to the shell, and grace to every pulse 
 that agitates animal organization, — 
 but of that also which reproves the 
 
120 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 pillars of the earth, and builds up her 
 barren precipices into the coldness of 
 the clouds, and lifts her shadowy 
 cones of mountain purple into the 
 pale arch of the sky. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 May ^th. 
 
 To any person who has all his 
 senses about him, a quiet walk, over 
 not more than ten or twelve miles of 
 road a day, is the most amusing of 
 all travelling ; and all travelling be- 
 comes dull in exact proportion to its 
 rapidity. 
 
 Going by railroad I do not consider 
 as travelling at all ; it is merely " be- 
 ing sent *' to a place, and very little 
 different from becoming a parcel. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestet, 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 121 
 
 May 6th, 
 Many joys may be given to men 
 which cannot be bought for gold, and 
 many fidehties found in them which 
 cannot be rewarded with it. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
 May 'Jth. 
 The relations of the womanly to 
 the manly nature, their different ca- 
 pacities of intellect or of virtue, seem 
 never to have been yet measured with 
 entire consent. We hear of the mis- 
 sion and of the rights of Woman, as 
 if these could ever be separate from 
 the mission and the rights of Man ; — 
 as if she and her lord were creatures 
 of independent kind and of irrecon- 
 cilable claim. This, at least, is wrong. 
 
122 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 And not less wrong — perhaps even 
 more foolishly wrong (for I will 
 anticipate thus far what I hope to 
 prove) — is the idea that woman is 
 only the shadow and attendant image 
 of her lord, owing him a thoughtless 
 and servile obedience, and supported 
 altogether in her weakness by the pre- 
 eminence of his fortitude. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 May 8th. 
 It would be easier to illustrate a 
 crest of Scottish mountain, with its 
 purple heather and pale harebells at 
 their fullest and fairest, or a glade of 
 Jura forest, with its floor of anemone 
 and moss, than a single portico of St. 
 Mark's, 
 
 "^Stones of Venice, 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 123 
 
 May gth. 
 There is always a considerable 
 quantity of pride, to begin with, in 
 what is called " giving one's self to 
 God." As if one had ever belonged 
 to anybody else ! 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 May loth. 
 It does not need much to humiliate 
 a mountain. A hut will sometimes 
 do it ; I never look up to the Col de 
 Balme from Chamouni, without a vi- 
 olent feeling of provocation against 
 its hospitable little cabin, whose bright 
 white walls form a visibly four-square 
 spot on the green ridge, and entirely 
 destroy all idea of its elevation. A 
 single villa will often mar a whole 
 landscape, and dethrgne a dynasty of 
 
124 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 hills ; and the Acropolis of Athens, 
 Parthenon and all, has, I believe, 
 been dwarfed into a model by the pal- 
 ace lately built beneath it. The fact 
 is, that hills are not so high as we 
 fancy them, and, when to the actual 
 impression of no mean comparative 
 size, is added the sense of the toil of 
 manly hand and thought, a sublimity 
 is reached, which nothing but gross 
 error in arrangement of its parts can 
 destroy. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 May nth. 
 It assumes this, because its masters 
 knew that the first and necessary 
 impulse of every truly taught and 
 knightly heart is this of Wind service 
 to its lady \ that where that true faith 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 125 
 
 and captivity are not, all wayward and 
 wicked passion must be ; and that in 
 this rapturous obedience to the single 
 love of his youth, is the sanctification 
 of all man's strength, and the con- 
 tinuance of all his purposes. And 
 this, not because such obedience 
 would be safe, or honorable, were it 
 ever rendered to the unworthy ; but 
 because it ought to be impossible for 
 every noble youth — it is impossible 
 for every one rightly trained — to love 
 any one whose gentle counsel he can- 
 not trust, or whose prayerful com- 
 mand he can hesitate to obey. 
 
 — sesame and Lilies. 
 
 May I2th. 
 The power of enjoying Music is 
 like the power of distinguishing tastes 
 
126 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 in food, a naturally implanted faculty ; 
 the power of being gratified by Paint- 
 ing is either the acquired taste of a 
 cultivated mind, or the peculiar gift 
 of an elevated intellect. 
 
 — PrcBterita. 
 
 May ijth. 
 Now, it is quite true that a person 
 of beautiful mind, dwelling on what- 
 ever appears to them most desirable 
 and lovely in a possible future, will 
 not only pass their time pleasantly, 
 but will even acquire, at last, a vague 
 and wildly gentle charm of manner 
 and feature, which will give them an 
 air of peculiar sanctity. 
 
 —Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 May 14th, 
 The Romanesque arch is beautiful 
 as an abstract line. Its type is al- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 127 
 
 ways before us in that of the appar- 
 ent vault of heaven, and horizon of 
 the earth. The cylindrical pillar is 
 always beautiful, for God has so 
 moulded the stem of every tree that 
 is pleasant to the eyes. The pointed 
 arch is beautiful ; it is the termina- 
 tion of every leaf that shakes in sum- 
 mer wind, and its most fortunate as- 
 sociations are directly borrowed from 
 the trefoiled grass of the field, or from 
 the stars of its flowers. Farther than 
 this, man's invention could not reach 
 without frank imitation. His next 
 step was to gather the flowers them- 
 selves, and wreathe them in his capi- 
 tals. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
128 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 May isth, 
 I believe an immense gain in the 
 bodily health and happiness of the 
 upper classes would follow on their 
 steadily endeavoring, however clum- 
 sily, to make the physical exertion they 
 now necessarily exert in amusements, 
 definitely serviceable. It would be 
 far better, for instance, that a gentle- 
 man should mow his own fields, than 
 ride over other people's. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 May i6th, 
 A man's hand may be full of in- 
 visible gold, and the wave of it, or 
 the grasp, shall do more than an- 
 other's with a shower of bullion. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 129 
 
 This invisible gold, also, does not 
 necessarily diminish in spending. 
 
 — U?tto this Last. 
 
 May lyth. 
 You cannot think that the buck- 
 ling on of the knight's armor by his 
 lady's hand was a mere caprice of ro- 
 mantic fashion. It is the type of an 
 eternal truth — that the soul's armor 
 is never well set to the heart unless 
 a woman's hand has braced it ; and 
 it is only when she braces it loosely 
 that the honor of manhood fails. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 May i8th. 
 Of the various schools of painting, 
 examples are accessible to every one. 
 
130 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 and reference to the works them- 
 selves is found sufficient for all pur- 
 poses of criticism ; but there is noth- 
 ing like St. Mark's or the Ducal 
 Palace to be referred to in the Na- 
 tional Gallery, and no faithful illus- 
 tration of them is possible on the 
 scale of such a volume as this. And 
 it is exceedingly difficult on any scale. 
 Nothing is so rare in art, as far as 
 my own experience goes, as a fair il- 
 lustration of architecture ; perfect il- 
 lustration of it does not exist. For 
 all good architecture depends upon 
 the adaptation of its chiselling to the 
 effect at a certain distance from the 
 eye ; and to render the peculiar con- 
 fusion in the midst of order, and un- 
 certainty in the midst of decision, and 
 mystery in the midst of trenchant 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 131 
 
 lines, which are the result of distance, 
 together with perfect expression of 
 the peculiarities of the design, re- 
 quires the skill of the most admirable 
 irtist, devoted to the work with the 
 most severe conscientiousness, nei- 
 ther the skill nor the determination 
 having as yet been given to the sub- 
 ject. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 May igth. 
 The hope of attaining a higher re- 
 ligious position, which induces us to 
 encounter, for its exalted alternative, 
 the risk of unhealthy error, is often, 
 as I said, founded more on pride 
 than piety ; and those who, in mod- 
 est usefulness, have accepted what 
 
132 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 seemed to them here the lowHest 
 place in the kingdom of their Father, 
 are not, I believe, the least likely to 
 receive hereafter the command, then 
 unmistakable, "Friend, go up higher." 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 May 20th. 
 I think I am justified in con- 
 sidering those forms to be most nat- 
 ural which are most frequent ; or, 
 rather, that on the shapes which in 
 the every-day world are familiar to 
 the eyes of men, God has stamped 
 those characters of beauty which He 
 has made it man's nature to love ; 
 while in certain exceptional forms He 
 has shown that the adoption of the 
 others was not a matter of necessity. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 133 
 
 but part of the adjusted harmony of 
 creation. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 May 2 1 St, 
 The great purpose of Music, 
 which is to say a thing you mean 
 deeply, in the strongest and clearest 
 possible way. 
 
 — Fors Clavigera. 
 
 May 22d. 
 The fact is, we are all, and always, 
 asleep through our lives ; and it is 
 only by pinching ourselves very hard 
 that we ever come to see, or under- 
 stand, anything. At least it is not 
 always we who pinch ourselves ; some- 
 times other people pinch us ; which 
 I suppose is very good of them, — or 
 
134 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 Other things, which I suppose is very 
 proper of them. But it is a sad life, 
 made up chiefly of naps and pinches. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust, 
 
 May 2jd, 
 So then while Nature is at all times 
 pleasant to us, and while the sight and 
 sense of her work may mingle happily 
 with all our thoughts, and labors, and 
 times of existence, that image of her 
 which the architect carries away rep- 
 resents what we can only perceive in 
 her by direct intellectual exertion, and 
 demands from us, wherever it appears, 
 an intellectual exertion of a similar 
 kind in order to understand it and 
 feel it. It is the written or sealed im- 
 pression of a thing sought out ; it is 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 135 
 
 the shaped result of inquiry and bod- 
 ily expression of thought. 
 
 — TAe Seven Lamps of Architecture, 
 
 May 24th. 
 
 A fool always wants to shorten 
 space and time ; a wise man wants to 
 lengthen both. A fool wants to kill 
 space and time ; a wise man, first to 
 gain them, then to animate them. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 May 2^th, 
 The man's power is active, pro- 
 gressive, defensive. He is eminently 
 the doer, the creator, the discoverer, 
 the defender. His intellect is for spec- 
 ulation and invention ; his energy for 
 
136 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 adventure, for war, and for conquest, 
 wherever war is just, wherever con- 
 quest necessary. But the woman's 
 power is for rule, not for battle, — and 
 her intellect is not for invention or 
 creation, but for sweet ordering, ar- 
 rangement, and decision. She sees 
 the qualities of things, their claims 
 and their places. Her great function 
 is Praise : she enters into no contest, 
 but infallibly judges the crown of con- 
 test. By her office and place, she is 
 protected from all danger and temp- 
 tation. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies, 
 
 May 26th, 
 Since the essence of wealth consists 
 in its authority over men, if the ap- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 137 
 
 parent or nominal wealth fail in this 
 power, it fails in essence ; in fact, 
 ceases to be wealth at all. 
 
 — C/nto this Last. 
 
 May 2yth, 
 Through the heavy door whose 
 bronze network closes the place of 
 his rest, let us enter the church itself 
 It is lost in still deeper twilight, to 
 which the eye must be accustomed 
 for some moments before the form of 
 the building can be traced ; and then 
 there opens before us a vast cave, 
 hewn out into the form of a Cross, 
 and divided into shadowy aisles by 
 many pillars. Round the domes of 
 its roof the light enters only through 
 narrow apertures like large stars ; 
 
138 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 and here and there a ray or two from 
 some far away casement wanders into 
 the darkness, and casts a narrow 
 phosphoric stream upon the waves of 
 marble that heave and fall in a thou- 
 sand colors along the floor. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 May 28th. 
 God has lent us the earth for our 
 life ; it is a great entail. It belongs 
 as much to those who are to come 
 after us, and whose names are already 
 written in the book of creation, as to 
 us ; and we have no right, by any- 
 thing that we do or neglect, to in- 
 volve them in unnecessary penalties, 
 or deprive them of benefits which it 
 was in our power to bequeath. '^ 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 139 
 
 May 2gth. 
 The moment a man can really 
 do his work, he becomes speechless 
 about it. All words become idle to 
 him — all theories. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 May joth. 
 People are perpetually squabbling 
 about what will be best to do, or easiest 
 to do, or advisablest to do, or prof- 
 itablest to do ; but they never, so far 
 as I hear them talk, ever ask what it 
 IS just to do. And it is the law of 
 heaven that you shall not be able to 
 judge what is wise or easy, unless you 
 are first resolved to judge what is 
 just. 
 
 — TAe Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
140 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 May 3 /J/. 
 It is popularly supposed that it 
 benefits a nation to invent a want. 
 But the fact is, that the true benefit 
 is in extinguishing a want — in living 
 with as few wants as possible. 
 
 — Time and Tide. 
 
JUNE 
 
June 1st, 
 We know no higher or more ener- 
 getic life than our own ; but there 
 seems to me this great good in the 
 idea of gradation of life, — it admits 
 the idea of a life above us, in other 
 creatures, as much nobler than ours, 
 as ours is nobler than that of the dust. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 June 2d. 
 Now let us consider for an instant 
 what would be the effect of contin- 
 ually repeating an expression of a 
 beautiful thought to any other of the 
 senses at times when the mind could 
 not address that sense to the under- 
 standing of it. Suppose that in time 
 
144 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 of serious occupation, of stern busi- 
 ness, a companion should repeat in 
 our ears continually some favorite 
 passage of poetry, over and over again 
 all day long. We should not only 
 soon be utterly sick and weary of the 
 sound of it, but that sound would at 
 the end of the day have so sunk into 
 the habit of the ear that the entire 
 meaning of the passage would be 
 dead to us, and it would ever thence- 
 forward require some effort to fix 
 and recover it. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 June 3d, 
 He who loves not God, nor his 
 brother, cannot love the grass be- 
 neath his feet, nor the creatures 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 145 
 
 which live not for his uses, filling 
 those spaces in the universe which he 
 needs not : while, on the other hand, 
 none can love God, nor his human 
 brother, without loving all things 
 which his Father loves ; nor without 
 looking upon them every one as in 
 that respect his brethren also, and 
 perhaps worthier than he, if, in the 
 under concords they have to fill, 
 their part is touched more truly. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes, 
 
 June 4th, 
 Stupidity is always the basis of the 
 Judas bargain. We do great injus- 
 tice to Iscariot, in thinking him 
 wicked above all common wicked- 
 ness. He was only a common 
 
146 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 money-lover, and, like all money- 
 lovers, did not understand Christ ; — 
 could not make out the worth of 
 Him, or meaning of Him. He 
 never thought He would be killed. 
 He was horror struck when he found 
 that Christ would be killed ; threw 
 his money away instantly, and 
 hanged himself. How many of our 
 present money-seekers, think you, 
 would have the grace to hang them- 
 selves, whoever was killed ? 
 
 — The Crcnvn of Wild Olive, 
 
 June Sth. 
 Nevertheless, it is open, I repeat, 
 to serious question, which I leave 
 to the reader's pondering, whether, 
 among national manufactures, that of 
 Souls of a good quality may not at 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 147 
 
 last turn out a quite leadingly lucra- 
 tive one ? 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
 June 6th. 
 I believe that from the beginning 
 of the world there has never been a 
 true or fine school of art in which 
 color was despised. It has often 
 been imperfectly attained and inju- 
 dicially applied, but I believe it to 
 be one of the essential signs of life in 
 a school of art, that it loves color ; 
 and I know it to be one of the first 
 signs of death in the Renaissance 
 schools, that they despised color. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 June yth. 
 Make either your belief or your 
 difficulty definite ; but do not go on, 
 
148 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 all through your life, believing noth- 
 ing intelligently, and yet supposing 
 that your having read the words of 
 a divine book must give you the 
 right to despise every religion but 
 your own. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 June 8th, 
 Wherever you can rest, there deco- 
 rate ; where rest is forbidden, so is 
 beauty. You must not mix orna- 
 ment with business, any more than 
 you may mix play. Work first, and 
 then rest. Work first, and then gaze, 
 but do not use golden ploughshares, 
 nor bind ledgers in enamel. Do not 
 thrash with sculptured flails : nor put 
 bas-reliefs on millstones. What ! it 
 will be asked, are we in the habit of 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 149 
 
 doing so? Even so ; always and 
 everywhere. The most familiar posi- 
 tion of Greek mouldings is in these 
 days on shop fronts. There is not a 
 tradesman's sign nor shelf nor coun- 
 ter in all the streets of all our cities, 
 which has not upon it ornaments 
 which were invented to adorn tem- 
 ples and beautify kings' palaces. 
 
 — TAe Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 June gth. 
 We usually speak as if death pur- 
 sued us, and we fled from him ; but 
 that is only so in rare instances. 
 Ordinarily he masks himself — makes 
 himself beautiful — all glorious ; not 
 like the King's daughter, all glorious 
 within, but outwardly : his clothing 
 of wrought gold. We pursue him 
 
I.IO BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 frantically all our days, he flying or 
 hiding from us. Our crowning suc- 
 cess at three-score and ten is utterly 
 and perfectly to seize, and hold him 
 in his eternal integrity — robes, ashes, 
 and sting. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
 June loth. 
 If you are singing, and sing false 
 notes, it does not matter how true 
 the words are. If you sing at all, 
 you must sing sweetly, if you color 
 at all, you must color rightly. 
 
 — Elements of Drawing. 
 
 June nth. 
 I assure you, strange as it may 
 seem, our scorn of Greek tradition 
 depends, not on our belief, but our 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 151 
 
 disbelief, of our own traditions. We 
 have, as yet, no sufficient clew to the 
 meaning of either ; but you will al- 
 ways find that, in proportion to the 
 earnestness of our own faith, its ten- 
 dency to accept a spiritual personality 
 increases ; and that the most vital and 
 beautiful Christian temper rests joy- 
 fully in its conviction of the multi- 
 tudinous ministry of living angels, 
 infinitely varied in rank and power. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust, 
 
 June I2th. 
 Another of the strange and evil 
 tendencies of the present day is to 
 the decoration of the railroad station. 
 Now, if there be any place in the 
 world in which people are deprived 
 
152 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 of that portion of temper and dis- 
 cretion which is necessary to the con- 
 templation of beauty, it is there. It 
 is the very temple of discomfort, and 
 the only charity that the builder can 
 extend to us is to show us, plainly as 
 may be, how soonest to escape from 
 it. The whole system of railroad 
 travelling is addressed to people who, 
 being in a hurry, are therefore, for 
 the time being, miserable. No one 
 would travel in that manner who 
 could help it — who had time to go 
 leisurely over hills and between 
 hedges, instead of through tunnels 
 and between banks : at least those 
 who would, have no sense of beauty 
 so acute as that we need consult it at 
 the station. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 153 
 
 June IJth. 
 The love of the human race is in- 
 creased by their individual differences, 
 and the unity of the creature, made 
 perfect by each having something to 
 bestow and to receive, bound to the 
 rest by a thousand various necessi- 
 ties and various gratitudes ; humility 
 in each rejoicing to admire in his fel- 
 low that which he finds not in him- 
 self, and each being in some respect 
 the complement of his race. 
 
 — Frotides Agrestes. 
 
 June 14th. 
 Do not think you can make a girl 
 lovely, if you do not make her happy. 
 There is not one restraint you put 
 on a good girl's nature — there is not 
 one check you give to her instincts 
 
154 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 of affection or effort — which will not 
 be indelibly written on her features, 
 with a hardness which is all the more 
 painful because it takes away the 
 brightness from the eyes of inno- 
 cence, and the charm from the brow 
 of virtue. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 June i^th. 
 Both the truth and the lie agree in 
 hiding themselves at first, but the lie 
 continues to hide itself with effort, as 
 we approach to examine it ; and leads 
 us, if undiscovered, into deeper lies ; 
 the truth reveals itself in proportion 
 to our patience and knowledge, dis- 
 covers itself kindly to our pleading, 
 and leads us, as it is discovered, into 
 deeper truths, 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 155 
 
 June i6th. 
 We owe to the Greeks every noble 
 discipline in literature, every radical 
 principle of art, and every form of 
 convenient beauty in our household 
 furniture and daily occupations of 
 life. We are unable ourselves to 
 make rational use of half that we 
 have received from them ; and, of 
 our own, we have nothing but dis- 
 coveries in science, and fine mechani- 
 cal adaptations of the discovered 
 physical powers. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 June lyth. 
 
 The railroad is in all its relations a 
 
 matter of earnest business, to be got 
 
 through as soon as possible. It 
 
 transmutes a man from a traveller 
 
156 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 into a living parcel. For the time 
 he has parted with the nobler charac- 
 teristics of his humanity for the sake 
 of a planetary power of locomotion. 
 Do not ask him to admire anything. 
 You might as well ask the wind. 
 Carry him safely, dismiss him soon : 
 he will thank you for nothing else. 
 All attempts to please him in any 
 other way are mere mockery, and 
 insults to the things by which you 
 endeavor to do so, 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 June i8th. 
 The lawful basis of wealth is, that 
 a man who works should be paid the 
 fair value of his work ; and that if he 
 does not choose to spend it to-day, 
 he should have free leave to keep it. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 157 
 
 and spend it to-morrow. Thus, an 
 industrious man working daily, and 
 laying by daily, attains at last the 
 possession of an accumulated sum of 
 wealth, to which he has absolute 
 right. The idle person who will not 
 work, and the wasteful person who 
 lays nothing by, at the end of the 
 same time will be doubly poor — poor 
 in possession, and dissolute in moral 
 habit ; and he will then naturally 
 covet the money which the other has 
 saved. And if he is then allowed to 
 attack the other, and rob him of his 
 well-earned wealth, there is no more 
 any motive for saving, or any reward 
 for good conduct ; and all society is 
 thereupon dissolved, or exists only 
 in systems of rapine. Therefore the 
 first necessity of social life is the 
 
158 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 clearness of national conscience in en- 
 forcing the law — that he should keep 
 who has JUSTLY earned. 
 
 — T/te Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 June igth. 
 The best part of every great work 
 is always inexplicable : it is good be- 
 cause it is good. 
 
 — Eletnents of Drawing. 
 
 June 20th, 
 The more readily we admit the 
 possibiHty of our own cherished con- 
 victions being mixed with error, the 
 more vital and helpful whatever is 
 right in them will become ; and no 
 error is so conclusively fatal as the 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 159 
 
 idea that God will not allow us to err, 
 though He has allowed all other men 
 to do so. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 June 2 1st. 
 The man who has eye and intellect 
 will invent beautiful proportions, and 
 cannot help it ; but he can no more 
 tell us how to do it than Wordsworth 
 could tell us how to write a sonnet, 
 or that Scott could have told us how 
 to plan a romance. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 June 2 2d. 
 Among the children of God, there 
 is always that fearful and bowed ap- 
 
160 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 prehension of His majesty, and that 
 sacred dread of all offence to Him 
 which is called the Fear of God ; yet 
 of real and essential fear there is not 
 any, but clinging of confidence to 
 Him as their Rock, Fortress, and De- 
 liverer; and perfect love, and casting 
 out of fear ; so that it is not possible 
 that, while the mind is rightly bent 
 on Him, there should be dread of 
 anything earthly or supernatural ; and 
 the more dreadful seems the height 
 of His majesty, the less fear they feel 
 that dwell in the shadow of it. " Of 
 whom shall I be afraid ? " 
 
 — Frondes Agresies. 
 
 June 2jd. 
 The perfect loveliness of a woman's 
 countenance can only consist in that 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 161 
 
 majestic peace, which is founded in 
 the memory of happy and useful 
 years, — full of sweet records ; and 
 from the joining of this with that yet 
 more majestic childishness, which is 
 still full of change and promise ; — 
 opening always — modest at once, and 
 bright, with hope of better things to 
 be won, and to be bestowed. There 
 is no old age where there is still that 
 promise— it is eternal youth. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 June 24th, 
 The mistake of the best men 
 through generation after generation, 
 has been that great one of thinking 
 to help the poor by almsgiving, and 
 by preaching of patience or of hope, 
 and by every other means, emollient 
 
162 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 or consolatory, except the one thing 
 which God orders for them, justice. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
 June 2^th. 
 There are perhaps no great or 
 noble truths, from those of religion 
 downwards, which present no mis- 
 takable aspect to casual or ignorant 
 contemplation. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 June 26th, 
 But if, indeed, there be a nobler 
 life in us than in the strangely mov- 
 ing atoms ; if, indeed, there is an 
 eternal difference between the fire 
 which inhabits them, and that which 
 animates us, — it must be shown, by 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 163 
 
 each of us in his appointed place, not 
 merely in the patience, but in the 
 activity of our hope ; not merely by 
 our desire, but our labor, for the 
 time when the dust of the generations 
 of men shall be confirmed for founda- 
 tions of the gates of the city of God. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 June 2yth. 
 Things in other respects alike, as 
 in their substance, or uses, or out- 
 ward forms, are noble or ignoble in 
 proportion to the fullness of the life 
 which either they themselves enjoy, 
 or of whose action they bear the evi- 
 dence, as sea sands are made beauti- 
 ful by their bearing the seal of the 
 motion of the waters. 
 
 — The Seve?i Lamps of Architecture, 
 
164 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 June 28th. 
 Now, roughly, not with vain sub- 
 tlety of definition, but for plain use 
 of the words, "play" is an exertion 
 of body or mind, made to please our- 
 selves, and with no determined end ; 
 and work is a thing done because it 
 ought to be done, and with a deter- 
 mined end. You play, as you call 
 it, at cricket, for instance. That is 
 as hard work as anything else ; but it 
 amuses you, and it has no result but 
 the amusement. If it were done as 
 an ordered form of exercise, for 
 health's sake, it would become work 
 directly. So, in like manner, what- 
 ever we do to please ourselves, and 
 only for the sake of the pleasure, not 
 for an ultimate object, is "play," the 
 " pleasing thing," not the useful 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIX 165 
 
 thing. Play may be useful in a 
 secondary sense (nothing is indeed 
 more useful or necessary) ; but the 
 use of it depends on its being spon- 
 taneous. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive, 
 
 June 2gth. 
 After learning to reason, you will 
 learn to sing ; for you will want to. 
 There is so much reason for singing 
 in this sweet world, w^hen one thinks 
 rightly of it. 
 
 — The Strait Gate. 
 
 June joth. 
 
 The human clay, now trampled and 
 
 despised, will not be, cannot be, knit 
 
 into strength and light by accident or 
 
 ordinances of unassisted fate. By hu- 
 
166 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 man cruelty and iniquity it has been 
 afflicted ; by human mercy and justice 
 it must be raised ; and, in all fear or 
 questioning of what is or is not the 
 real message of creation or of revela- 
 tion, you may assuredly find perfect 
 peace, if you are resolved to do that 
 which your Lord has plainly required, 
 — and content that He should indeed 
 require no more of you, than to do 
 Justice, to love Mercy, and to walk 
 humbly with Him. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
JULY 
 
July 1st. 
 Among the countless analogies by 
 which the nature and relations of the 
 human soul are illustrated in the ma- 
 terial creation, none are more striking 
 than the impressions inseparably con- 
 nected with the active and dormant 
 states of matter. I have elsewhere 
 endeavored to show, that no incon- 
 siderable part of the essential char- 
 acters of Beauty depended on the ex- 
 pression of vital energy in organic 
 things, or on the subjection to such 
 energy, of things naturally passive and 
 powerless. 
 
 — Th^ Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
170 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 July 2d. 
 He who has once stood beside the 
 grave, to look back upon the com- 
 panionship which has been forever 
 closed, feeling how impotent, there, 
 are the wild love, and the keen sor- 
 row, to give one instant's pleasure to 
 the pulseless heart, or atone in the 
 lowest measure to the departed spirit, 
 for the hour of unkindness, will 
 scarcely for the future incur that debt 
 to the heart, which can only be dis- 
 charged to the dust. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 July 3d. 
 There is a wide difference between 
 elementary knowledge and superficial 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 171 
 
 knowledge — between a firm begin- 
 ning, and a feeble smattering. A 
 woman may always help her husband 
 by what she knows, however little ; 
 by what she half-knows, or mis- 
 knows, she will only tease him. 
 
 — Sesame attd Lilies. 
 
 July ^M. 
 Where the land falls, the water 
 flows. The course neither of clouds 
 nor rivers can be forbidden by human 
 will. But the disposition and admin- 
 istration of them can be altered by 
 human forethought. Whether the 
 stream shall be a curse or a blessing, 
 depends upon man's labor, and ad- 
 ministrating intelligence. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
172 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 July 5th, 
 But be it remembered, that in all 
 things, ignorance is liable to be de- 
 ceived, and has no right to accuse any- 
 thing but itself as the source of the 
 deception. The style and the words 
 are dishonest, not which are liable to 
 be misunderstood if subjected to no 
 inquiry, but which are deliberately 
 calculated to lead inquiry astray. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 July 6th. 
 But when we begin to be concerned 
 with the energies of man, we find our- 
 selves instantly dealing with a double 
 creature. Most part of his being 
 seems to have a fictitious counterpart, 
 which it is at his peril if he do not 
 cast off and deny. Thus he has a 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 173 
 
 true and false (otherwise called a liv- 
 ing and dead, or a feigned or un- 
 feigned) faith. He has a true and a 
 false hope, a true and a false charity, 
 and, finally, a true and a false lie. 
 
 — T/ie Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 July 7th. 
 For there is just this difference be- 
 tween the making of a girl's character 
 and a boy's — you may chisel a boy 
 into shape, as you would a rock, or 
 hammer him into it, if he be of a bet- 
 ter kind, as you would a piece of 
 bronze. But you cannot hammer a 
 girl into anything. She grows as a 
 flower does, — she will wither without 
 sun ; she will decay in her sheath, as 
 the narcissus does, if you do not give 
 her air enough ; she may fall, and de- 
 
174 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 file her head in dust, if you leave her 
 without help at some moments of her 
 life ; but you cannot fetter her ; she 
 must take her own fair form and way, 
 if she take any, and in mind as in 
 body, must have always. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 July 8th. 
 Absolute justice is indeed no more 
 attainable than absolute truth ; but 
 the righteous man is distinguished 
 from the unrighteous by his desire 
 and hope of justice, as the true man 
 from the false by his desire and hope 
 of truth. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
 July gth. 
 The end of art is as serious as that 
 of other beautiful things — of the blue 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 175 
 
 sky, and the green grass, and the 
 clouds, and the dew. They are either 
 useless, or they are of much deeper 
 function than giving amusement. 
 
 — Cestus of Aglaia. 
 
 July loth. 
 What we carelessly call False 
 hope, or False charity, is only mis- 
 taken hope and mistaken charity. 
 The real question is only — are we 
 dead or alive ? — for, if dead at heart 
 and having only a name to live in all 
 our actions, we are sowing seeds of 
 death. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 July nth. 
 The desire of rest planted in the 
 heart is no sensual, no unworthy 
 
176 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 one ; but a longing for renovation, 
 and for escape from a state whose 
 every phase is mere preparation for 
 another equally transitory, to one in 
 which permanence shall have become 
 possible through perfection. Hence 
 the great call of Christ to men, that 
 call on which St. Augustine fixed as 
 the essential expression of Christian 
 hope, is accompanied by the promise 
 of rest ; and the death bequest of 
 Christ to men, is peace. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 July I2th. 
 There are few bargains in which 
 the buyer can ascertain with any- 
 thing like precision that the seller 
 would have taken no less; or the 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 177 
 
 seller acquire more than a comfort- 
 able faith that the purchaser would 
 have given no more. This impossi- 
 bility of precise knowledge prevents 
 neither from striving to attain the 
 desired point of greatest vexation 
 and injury to the other, nor from 
 accepting it for a scientific principle 
 that he is to buy for the least and 
 sell for the most possible, though 
 what the real least or most may be 
 he cannot tell. In like manner, a 
 just person lays it down for a scien- 
 tific principle that he is to pay a just 
 price, and, without being able pre- 
 cisely to ascertain the limits of such 
 a price, will nevertheless strive to 
 attain the closest possible approxima- 
 tion to them. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
178 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 July 13th, 
 There will be always a number of 
 men who would fain set themselves 
 to the accumulation of wealth as the 
 sole object of their lives. Neces- 
 sarily, that class of men is an unedu- 
 cated class, inferior in intellect, and 
 more or less cowardly. It is physi- 
 cally impossible for a well-educated, 
 intellectual, or brave man to make 
 money the chief object of his 
 thoughts ; just as it is for him to 
 make his dinner the principal object 
 of them. All healthy people like 
 their dinners, but their dinner is not 
 the main object of their lives. So 
 all healthily-minded people like mak- 
 ing money — ought to like it, and to 
 enjoy the sensation of winning it ; 
 but the main object of their life is 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 179 
 
 not money ; it is something better 
 than money. 
 
 — T/ie Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 July 14th. 
 It often happens that the beauty 
 of the veining in some varieties of 
 alabaster is so great, that it becomes 
 desirable to exhibit it by dividing 
 the stone, not merely to economize 
 its substance, but to display the 
 changes in the disposition of its fan- 
 tastic lines. By reversing one of two 
 thin plates successively taken from 
 the stone, and placing their corre- 
 sponding edges in contact, a per- 
 fectly symmetrical figure may be 
 obtained, which will enable the eye 
 to comprehend more thoroughly the 
 
180 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 position of the veins. And this is 
 actually the method in which, for the 
 most part, the alabasters of St. Mark 
 are employed ; thus accomplishing a 
 double good, — directing the specta- 
 tor, in the first place, to close obser- 
 vation of the nature of the stone em- 
 ployed, and in the second, giving 
 him a farther proof of the honesty of 
 intention in the builder : for wherever 
 similar veining is discovered in two 
 pieces, the fact is declared that they 
 have been cut from the same stone. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 July 15th, 
 The life of a nation is usually, 
 like the flow of a lava stream, first 
 bright and fierce, then languid and 
 
FROM JOHM RUSKIN 181 
 
 covered, at last advancing only by 
 the tumbling over and over of its 
 frozen blocks. And that last condi- 
 tion is a sad one to look upon. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 July i6th. 
 Generally, we are under an impres- 
 sion that a man's duties are public, 
 and a woman's private. But this is 
 not altogether so. A man has a per- 
 sonal work or duty, relating to his 
 own home, and a public work or 
 duty, which is the expansion of the 
 other, relating to the state. So a 
 woman has a personal work or duty, 
 relating to her own home, and a 
 public work and duty, which is also 
 the expansion of that. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
( 
 
 182 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 July lyth. 
 It is quite possible to lead a vir- 
 tuous and happy life without books 
 or ink, but not without wishing to 
 sing when we are happy, nor with- 
 out meeting with continual occasions 
 when our song, if right, would be a 
 kind service to others. 
 
 — Rock Honeycomb. 
 
 July i8th. 
 For it is on its value as a piece of 
 perfect and unchangeable coloring, 
 that the claims of this edifice to our 
 respect are finally rested ; and a deaf 
 man might as well pretend to pro- 
 nounce judgment on the merits of a 
 full orchestra, as an architect trained 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 183 
 
 in the composition of form only, to 
 discern the beauty of St. Mark's. 
 
 — stones of Venice. 
 
 July igth. 
 We have certain work to do for 
 our bread, and that is to be done 
 strenuously ; other work to do for 
 our delight, and that is to be done 
 heartily : neither is to be done by 
 halves and shifts, but with a will ; 
 and what is not worth this effort is 
 not to be done at all. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 July 20th. 
 And least of all whatever may have 
 been the eagerness of our passions, 
 or the height of our pride, are we 
 
184 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 able to understand in its depth the 
 third and most solemn character in 
 which our life is like those clouds of 
 heaven ; that to it belongs not only 
 their transience, not only their mys- 
 tery, but also their power ; that in 
 the cloud of the human soul there is 
 a fire stronger than the lightning, and 
 a grace more precious than the rain. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 July 2 1st, 
 A brave belief in life is indeed an 
 enviable state of mind, but, as far as 
 I can discern, an unusual one. I 
 know few Christians so convinced of 
 the splendor of the rooms in their 
 Father's house, a^ to be happier when 
 their friends are called to those man- 
 sions, than they would have been if 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 185 
 
 the Queen had sent for them to live 
 at court : nor has the Church's most 
 ardent " desire to depart, and be with 
 Christ," ever cured it of the singular 
 habit of putting on mourning for 
 every person summoned to such de- 
 parture. On the contrary, a brave 
 belief in death has been assuredly 
 held by many not ignoble persons, 
 and it is a sign of the last depravity 
 in the Church itself, when it assumes 
 that such a belief is inconsistent with 
 either purity of character, or energy 
 of hand. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 July 22d. 
 Joy and love are not arts, nor are 
 they limited to humanity. But the 
 love song becomes art when, by rea- 
 
186 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 son and discipline, the singer has be- 
 come conscious of the ravishment in 
 its divisions to the lute. 
 
 — Laws of Fesole, 
 
 July 23d, 
 It will be asked, How is imitation 
 to be rendered healthy and vital ? 
 Unhappily, while it is easy to enu- 
 merate the signs of life, it is impossi- 
 ble to define or to communicate life ; 
 and while every intelligent writer on 
 Art has insisted on the difference be- 
 tween the copying found in an ad- 
 vancing or recedent period, none 
 have been able to communicate, in 
 the slightest degree, the force of vi- 
 tality to the copyist over whom they 
 might have influence. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 187 
 
 July 24th, 
 And our definition of Wealth, ex- 
 panded, becomes : " The possession 
 3f useful articles, which we can use.'' 
 This is a very serious change. For 
 kvealth, instead of depending merely 
 3n a " have," is thus seen to depend 
 3n a " can." And what we reasoned 
 3f only as accumulation of material is 
 seen to demand also accumulation of 
 capacity. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
 July 2Sth, 
 Did you ever hear, not of a Maud, 
 but a Madeline, who went down to 
 her garden in the dawn, and found 
 One waiting at the gate, whom she 
 supposed to be the gardener ? Have 
 you not sought Him often ; — sought 
 
188 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 Him in vain, all through the night ; — 
 sought Him in vain at the gate of 
 that old garden where the fiery sword 
 is set? He is never there; but at 
 the gate of this garden He is waiting 
 always — waiting to take your hand — 
 ready to go down to see the fruits of 
 the valley, to see whether the vine 
 has flourished, and the pomegranate 
 budded. There you shall see with 
 Him the little tendrils of the vines 
 that His hand is guiding — there you 
 shall see the pomegranate springing 
 where His hand cast the sanguine 
 seed ; — more : you shall see the 
 troops of the angel keepers that, with 
 their wings, wave away the hungry 
 birds from the pathsides where he 
 has sown, and call to each other be- 
 tween the vineyard rows, " Take us 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 189 
 
 ■he foxes, the little foxes, that spoil 
 'he vines, for our vines have tender 
 grapes." 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 July 26th. 
 None of us, or very few of us, do 
 either hard or soft work because we 
 think we ought ; but because we have 
 chanced to fall into the way of it, and 
 cannot help ourselves. Now, nobody 
 does anything well that they cannot 
 help doing : work is only done well 
 when it is done with a will ; and no 
 man has a thoroughly sound will un- 
 less he knows he is doing what he 
 should, and is in his place. 
 
 — The Crmvn of Wild Olive. 
 
190 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 July 27th. 
 Perhaps the great monotone gray 
 of Nature and of Time is a better 
 color than any that the human hand 
 can give ; but that is nothing to our 
 present business. The simple fact is, 
 that the builders of those cathedrals 
 laid upon them the brightest colors 
 they could obtain, and that there is 
 not, as far as I am aware, in Europe, 
 any monument of a truly noble school 
 which has not been either painted all 
 over, or vigorously touched with 
 paint, mosaic, and gilding in its 
 prominent parts. Thus far Egyp- 
 tians, Greeks, Goths, Arabs, and 
 mediaeval Christians all agree : none 
 of them, when in their right senses, 
 ever think of doing without paint; 
 and, therefore, when I said above that 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 191 
 
 the Venetians were the only people 
 who had thoroughly sympathized 
 with the Arabs in this respect, I re- 
 ferred, first, to their intense love of 
 color, which led them to lavish the 
 most expensive decorations on ordi- 
 nary dwelling-houses ; and, secondly, 
 to that perfection of the color-instinct 
 in them, which enabled them to ren- 
 der whatever they did, in this kind, 
 as just in 'principle as it was gorgeous 
 in appliance. 
 
 — Stones of Venice^ 
 
 July 28th, 
 It seems to me, on the whole, that 
 the feehngs of the purest and most 
 mightily passioned human souls are 
 likely to be the truest. Not, in- 
 deed, if they do not desire to know 
 
192 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 the truth, or blind themselves to it 
 that they may please themselves with 
 passion, — for then they are no longer 
 pure ; but if, continually seeking and 
 accepting the truth as far as it is dis- 
 cernible, they trust their Maker for 
 the integrity of the instincts He has 
 gifted them with, and rest in the 
 sense of a higher truth which they 
 cannot demonstrate, I think they will 
 be most in the right, so. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 July 2gth. 
 We are foolish, and without ex- 
 cuse foolish, in speaking of the 
 "superiority" of one sex to the 
 other, as if they could be compared 
 in similar things. Each has what 
 the other has not : each completes 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 193 
 
 the other, and is completed by the 
 other : they are in nothing ahke, and 
 the happiness and perfection of both 
 depend on each asking and receiving 
 from the other what the other only 
 can give. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 July 30th, 
 A well-disposed group of notes in 
 Music will sometimes make you 
 weep and sometimes laugh. You 
 can express the depth of all affec- 
 tions by these dispositions of sound ; 
 you can give courage to the soldier, 
 language to the lover, consolation to 
 the mourner, more joy to the joyful, 
 more humility to the devout. 
 
 — Two Paths. 
 
194 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 July 31st, 
 Like other beautiful things in this 
 world, its end is to be beautiful ; and, 
 in proportion to its beauty, it receives 
 permission to be otherwise useless. 
 We do not blame emeralds and ru- 
 bies because we cannot make them 
 into heads of hammers. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
AUGUST 
 
i 
 
August 1st. 
 And, exactly as a good and earnest 
 student of drawing will not lose time 
 in ruling lines or finishing back- 
 grounds about studies which, while 
 they have answered his immediate 
 purpose, he knows to be imperfect 
 and inferior to what he will do here- 
 after, — so the vigor of a true school 
 of early architecture, which is either 
 working under the influence of high 
 example or which is itself in a state 
 of rapid development, is very curi- 
 ously traceable, among other signs, 
 in the contempt of exact symmetry 
 and measurement, which in dead ar- 
 chitecture are most painful necessities. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
198 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 August 2d, 
 And here is the test, with every 
 man, of whether money is the prin- 
 cipal object with him, or not. If in 
 mid-life he could pause and say, 
 " Now I have enough to live upon, 
 I'll live upon it ; and having well 
 earned it, I will also well spend it, 
 and go out of the world poor, as I 
 came into it," then money is not 
 principal with him ; but if, having 
 enough to live upon in the manner 
 befitting his character and rank, he 
 still wants to make more, and to die 
 rich, then money is the principal ob- 
 ject with him, and it becomes a curse 
 to himself, and generally to those 
 who spend it after him. For you 
 know it must be spent some day ; the 
 only question is whether the man who 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 199 
 
 makes it shall spend it, or some one 
 else, and generally it is better for the 
 maker to spend it, for he will know 
 best its value and use. And if a man 
 does not choose thus to spend his 
 money, he must either hoard it or 
 lend it, and the worst thing he can 
 generally do is to lend it ; for bor- 
 rowers are nearly always ill-spenders, 
 and it is with lent money that all evil 
 is mainly done, and all unjust war 
 protracted. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 August jd. 
 Music is the nearest at hand, the 
 most orderly, the most delicate, and 
 the most perfect of all bodily pleas- 
 
200 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 ures, it is also the only one which is 
 equally helpful to all the ages of man, 
 — helpful from the nurse's song to her 
 infant, to the music unheard of oth- 
 ers, which so often haunts the death- 
 bed of pure and innocent spirits. 
 
 — Time and Tide. 
 
 August 4th. 
 Perhaps all that we have to do is 
 meant for nothing more than an ex- 
 ercise of the heart and of the will, 
 and is useless in itself; but, at all 
 events, the little use it has may well 
 be spared if it is not worth putting 
 our hands and our strength to. It 
 does not become our immortality to 
 take an ease inconsistent with its au- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 201 
 
 thority, nor to suffer any instruments 
 to which it can dispense, to come be- 
 tween it and the things it rules : and 
 he who would form the creations of 
 his own mind by any other instru- 
 ment than his own hand, would also, 
 if he might, give grinding organs to 
 Heaven's angels, to make their music 
 easier. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 
 
 August ^th. 
 Three-fourths of the demands ex- 
 isting in the world are romantic ; 
 founded on visions, idealisms, hopes, 
 and affections ; and the regulation of 
 the purse is, in its essence, regulation 
 of the imagination and the heart. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
202 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 August 6th. 
 
 '' What is your life ? It is even 
 as a vapor that appeareth for a little 
 time, and then vanisheth away." 
 
 I suppose few people reach the 
 middle or latter period of their age, 
 without having, at some moment of 
 change or disappointment, felt the 
 truth of those bitter words ; and been 
 startled by the fading of the sun- 
 shine from the cloud of their life, 
 into the sudden agony of the knowl- 
 edge that the fabric of it was as 
 fragile as a dream, and the endurance 
 of it as transient as the dew. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 August Jth. 
 If your life were but a fever fit, — 
 the madness of a night, whose follies 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 203 
 
 were all to be forgotten in the dawn, 
 it might matter little how you fretted 
 away the sickly hours, — what toys 
 you snatched at, or let fall, — what 
 visions you followed wistfully with 
 the deceived eyes of sleepless frenzy. 
 Is the earth only an hospital ? are 
 health and heaven to come ? Then 
 play, if you care to play, on the floor 
 of the hospital dens. Knit its straws 
 into what crowns please you ; gather 
 the dust of it for treasure, and die rich 
 in that, though clutching at the black 
 motes in the air with your dying 
 hands ; — and yet, it may be well with 
 you. But if this Hfe be no dream, 
 and the world no hospital, but your 
 Palace-inheritance ; — if all the peace 
 and power and joy you can ever win, 
 must be won now, and all fruit of vie- 
 
204 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 tory gathered here, or never ; — will 
 you still, throughout the puny totality 
 of your life, weary yourselves in the 
 fire for vanity ? 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 August 8th. 
 And if the stranger would yet learn 
 in what spirit it was that the dominion 
 of Venice was begun, and in what 
 strength she went forth conquering 
 and to conquer, let him not seek to 
 estimate the wealth of her arsenals or 
 number of her armies, nor look upon 
 the pageantry of her Palaces, nor en- 
 ter into the secrets of her councils; 
 but let him ascend the highest tier of 
 the stern ledges that sweep round 
 the altar of Torcello, and then, look- 
 ing as the pilot did of old along the 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 205 
 
 marble ribs of the goodly temple-ship, 
 let him repeople its veined deck with 
 the shadows of its dead mariners, and 
 strive to feel in himself the strength 
 of heart that was kindled within them. 
 
 — Stofies of Venice. 
 
 August gth. 
 Compare a river that has burst its 
 banks with one that is bound by 
 them, and the clouds that are scat- 
 tered over the face of the whole 
 heaven with those that are marshalled 
 into ranks and orders by its winds. 
 So that though restraint, utter and 
 unrelaxing, can never be comely, this 
 is not because it is in itself an evil, 
 but only because, when too great, it 
 overpowers the nature of the thing 
 restrained, and so counteracts the 
 
206 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 other laws of which that nature is 
 itself composed. 
 
 — TAe Seven Lam/>s of Architecture. 
 
 August loth. 
 Will you not, then, make as sure 
 of the Life that now is, as you are of 
 the Death that is to come? Your 
 hearts are wholly in this world — 
 will you not give them to it wisely, 
 as well as perfectly? And see, first 
 of all, that you have hearts, and 
 sound hearts, too, to give. Because 
 you have no heaven to look for, is 
 that any reason that you should re- 
 main ignorant of this wonderful and 
 infinite earth, which is firmly and 
 instantly given you in possession? 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 207 
 
 August nth. 
 All good architecture is the expres- 
 sion of national life and character ; 
 and it is produced by a prevalent 
 and eager national taste, or desire for 
 beauty. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 August I2th. 
 The " wealth of this world " con- 
 sists broadly in its healthy food-giv- 
 ing land, its convenient building land, 
 its useful animals, its useful minerals, 
 its books, and works of art. 
 
 — Fors Clavigera. 
 
 August ijth. 
 It is true that symmetry is gener- 
 ally sought for in works of smaller 
 jewelery ; but, even there, not a per- 
 
21^ BE.iCTIFCL THOUGHTS 
 
 feet symmetry, and obniined under 
 circumstances quite ditferent from 
 those which :it^'ect the placing ot 
 sh:iits m architecture. First : the 
 symmetry is usually imperfect. The 
 stones that seem to match each other 
 in a ring or necklace, appear to do 
 so only because thev are so small 
 that their ditFerences ;u-e not easily 
 mcisured bv the eye; but there is 
 almost alwavs such difference between 
 them .IS \v\>v.ld be strikir.i:'\ ...^•.m- ^ ::: 
 if it existed in the same propoicion 
 between two shafts nine or ten feet 
 in height. Secondly : the quantity 
 ot stones which pass through a jew- 
 eler's hands, and the facility of ex- 
 change of such small objects, enable 
 the tradesman to select any number 
 ot szon^s of approximate size ; a se- 
 
FROM JOHX Rl'SKIX 209 
 
 lection, however, often requiring so 
 much time, that perfect symmetry in 
 a group of very line stones adds 
 enormously to their value. But the 
 architect has neither the time nor the 
 facilities of exchange. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 August 14th, 
 The feebleness of childhood is full 
 of promise and of interest, — the 
 struggle of imperfect knowledge full 
 of energy and continuity, — but to 
 see impotence and rigidity settling 
 upon the form of the developed man ; 
 to see the types which once had the 
 die of thought struck fresh upon them, 
 worn flat by over use ; to see the 
 shell of the living creature in its adult 
 form, when its colors are faded, and 
 
210 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 its inhabitant perished, — this is a 
 sight more humiliating, more melan- 
 choly, than the vanishing of all knowl- 
 edge, and the return to confessed 
 and helpless infancy. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 August i^th. 
 There is rough work to be done, 
 and rough men must do it ; there is 
 gentle work to be done, and gentle- 
 men must do it ; and it is physically 
 impossible that one class should do, 
 or divide, the work of the other. 
 And it is of no use to try to conceal 
 this sorrowful fact by fine words, 
 and to talk to the workman about the 
 honorableness of manual labor, and 
 the dignity of humanity. Rough 
 work, honorable or not, takes the life 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 211 
 
 out of us; and the man who has 
 been heaving clay out of a ditch 
 all day, or driving an express train 
 against the north wind all night, or 
 holding a collier's helm in a gale on 
 a lee shore, or whirling white-hot iron 
 at a furnace mouth, is not the same 
 man at the end of his day, or night, 
 as one who has been sitting in a quiet 
 room, with everything comfortable 
 about him, reading books, or classing 
 butterflies, or painting pictures. 
 
 — T/ie Crown of Wild Olive, 
 
 August 1 6th. 
 You cannot paint or sing your- 
 selves into being good men. You 
 must be good men before you can 
 either paint or sing, and then the 
 
212 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 color and the sound will complete 
 in you all that is best. 
 
 — Lectures on Art. 
 
 August lyth. 
 There is dreaming enough, and 
 earthliness enough, and sensuality 
 enough in human existence, without 
 our turning the few glowing moments 
 of it into mechanism; and since our 
 life must at the best be but a vapor 
 that appears for a little time and then 
 vanishes away, let it at least appear 
 as a cloud in the height of Heaven, 
 not as the thick darkness that broods 
 over the blast of the Furnace, and 
 rolHng of the Wheel. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 213 
 
 August i8th. 
 
 Labor is the contest of the life 
 of man with an opposite ; — the term 
 "life" including his intellect, soul, 
 and physical power, contending with 
 question, difficulty, trial, or material 
 force. 
 
 Labor is of a higher or lower order, 
 as it includes more or fewer of the 
 elements of life; and labor of good 
 quality, in any kind, includes always 
 as much intellect and feeling as will 
 fully and harmoniously regulate the 
 physical force. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
 August igth. 
 To those among us, however, who 
 have lived long enough to form some 
 
214 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 just estimate of the rate of the changes 
 which are, hour by hour in accelerat- 
 ing catastrophe, manifesting them- 
 selves in the laws, the arts, and the 
 creeds of men, it seems to me, that 
 now at least, if never at any former 
 time, the thoughts of the true nature 
 of our life, and of its powers and 
 responsibilities, should present them- 
 selves with absolute sadness and stern- 
 ness. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 August 20th. 
 The shortness of life is not, to any 
 rational person, a conclusive reason 
 for wasting the space of it which may 
 be granted him ; nor does the antici- 
 pation of death to-morrow suggest, to 
 any one but a drunkard, the expedi- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 215 
 
 ency of drunkenness to-day. To 
 teach that there is no device in the 
 grave, may indeed make the device- 
 less person more contented in his dul- 
 ness ; but it will make the deviser 
 only more earnest in devising ; nor is 
 human conduct likely, in every case, 
 to be purer, under the conviction that 
 all its evil may in a moment be par- 
 doned, and all its wrong-doing in a 
 moment redeemed ; and that the sigh 
 of repentance, which purges the guilt 
 of the past, will waft the soul into a 
 felicity which forgets its pain, — than 
 it may be under the sterner, and to 
 many not unwise minds, more prob- 
 able, apprehension, that " what a man 
 soweth that shall he also reap " — or 
 others reap, — when he, the living 
 seed of pestilence, walketh no 
 
216 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 more in darkness, but lies down 
 therein. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 August 2 1 St, 
 The perception of color is a gift 
 just as definitely granted to one per- 
 son, and denied to another, as an ear 
 for music ; and the very first requisite 
 for true judgment of St. Mark's, is 
 the perfection of that color-faculty 
 which few people ever set themselves 
 seriously to find out whether they 
 possess or not. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 August 2 2d, 
 
 You know there is a tendency in 
 the minds of many men, when they 
 are heavily disappointed in the main 
 purposes of their life, to feel, and per- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 217 
 
 haps in warning, perhaps in mockery, 
 to declare, that life itself is a vanity. 
 Because it has disappointed them, 
 they think its nature is of disappoint- 
 ment always, or at best, of pleasure 
 that can be grasped by imagination 
 only ; that the cloud of it has no 
 strength nor fire within ; but is a 
 painted cloud only, to be delighted 
 in, yet despised. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 August 2jd, 
 
 Of all wastes, the greatest waste 
 that you can commit is the waste of 
 labor. If you went down in the 
 morning into your dairy, and found 
 that your youngest child had got 
 down before you, and that he and 
 the cat were at play together, and 
 
218 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 that he had poured out all the cream 
 on the floor for the cat to lap up, you 
 would scold the child, and be sorry 
 the cream was wasted. But if, in- 
 stead of wooden bowls with milk in 
 them, there are golden bowls with 
 human life in them, and instead of 
 the cat to play with — the devil to 
 play with ; and you yourself the 
 player ; and instead of leaving that 
 golden bowl to be broken by God at 
 the fountain, you break it in the dust 
 yourself, and pour the human life out 
 on the ground for the fiend to lick up 
 — that is no waste ! 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 August 24th. 
 There is no music in a " rest '' that 
 I know of, but there*s the making of 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 219 
 
 music in it, and people are always 
 missing that part of the life melody, 
 and scrambling on without counting 
 — not that it's easy to count ; but 
 nothing on which so much depends 
 ever is easy — yet " All one's life is 
 a Music, if one touches the notes 
 rightly and in tune." 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust. 
 
 August 2^th. 
 Patiently, eddy by eddy, the clear 
 green streams wind along their well- 
 known beds ; and under the dark 
 quietness of the undisturbed pines, 
 there spring up, year by year, such 
 company of joyful flowers as I know 
 not the like of among all the bless- 
 ings of the earth. It was spring time, 
 too ; and all were coming forth in 
 
220 BEAUTIFUL THOtJGHTS 
 
 clusters crowded for very love ; there 
 was room enough for all, but they 
 crushed their leaves into all manner 
 of strange shapes only to be nearer to 
 each other. There was the wood 
 anemone, star after star, closing every 
 now and then into nebulae ; and there 
 was the oxalis, troop by troop, like 
 virginal processions of the Mois de 
 Marie, the dark vertical clefts in the 
 limestone choked up with them as 
 with heavy snow, and touched with 
 ivy on the edges — ivy as light and 
 lovely as the vine ; and, ever and 
 anon, a blue gush of violets, and cow- 
 sHp bells in sunny places ; and in the 
 more open ground, the vetch, and 
 comfrey, and mezereon, and the small 
 sapphire buds of the Polygala Alpina, 
 and the wild strawberry, just a bios- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 221 
 
 som or two, all showered amidst the 
 golden softness of deep, warm, amber- 
 colored moss. 
 
 — TAg Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 August 26th. 
 But the effect of failure upon my 
 own mind has been just the reverse 
 of this. The more that my life dis- 
 appointed me, the more solemn and 
 wonderful it became to me. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 August 2'Jth, 
 We shall never know what you 
 have done or left undone, until the 
 question with us every morning, is 
 not how to do the gainful thing, but 
 how to do the just thing during the 
 day ; nor until we are at least so far 
 on the way to being Christian, as to 
 
222 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 acknowledge that maxim of the poor 
 half-way Mahometan, " One hour in 
 the execution of justice is worth 
 seventy years of prayer." 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 August 28th. 
 There is no Wealth but Life. 
 Life, including all its powers of love, 
 of joy, and of admiration. That 
 country is the richest which nourishes 
 the greatest number of noble and 
 happy human beings ; that man is 
 richest who, having perfected the 
 functions of his own life to the ut- 
 most, has also the widest helpful 
 influence, both personal, and by means 
 of his possessions, over the lives of' 
 others. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 223 
 
 August 2gth. 
 Nor is this interior without effect 
 on the minds of the people. At every 
 hour of the day there are groups col- 
 lected before the various shrines, and 
 solitary worshippers scattered through 
 the dark places of the church, evi- 
 dently in prayer both deep and reve- 
 rent, and, for the most part, pro- 
 foundly sorrowful. The devotees at 
 the greater number of the renowned 
 shrines of Romanism may be seen 
 murmuring their appointed prayers 
 with wandering eyes and unengaged 
 gestures ; but the step of the stranger 
 does not disturb those who kneel on 
 the pavement of St. Mark's ; and 
 hardly a moment passes, from early 
 morning to sunset, in which we may 
 not see some half-veiled figure enter 
 
224 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 beneath the Arabian porch, cast itself 
 into long abasement on the floor of 
 the temple, and then rising slowly 
 with more confirmed step, and with a 
 passionate kiss and clasp of the arms 
 given to the feet of the crucifix, by 
 which the lamps burn always in the 
 northern aisle, leave the church, as if 
 comforted. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 August JOth. 
 How cold is all history, how life- 
 less all imagery, compared to that 
 which the living nation writes, and 
 the uncorrupted marble bears ! — how 
 many pages of doubtful record might 
 we not often spare, for a few stones 
 left one upon another ! The ambition 
 of the old Babel builders was well 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 225 
 
 directed for this world : there are but 
 two strong conquerors of the forget- 
 fulness of men. Poetry and Architec- 
 ture ; and the latter in some sort in- 
 cludes the former, and is mightier in 
 its reality : it is well to have, not only 
 what men have thought and felt, but 
 what their hands have handled, and 
 their strength wrought, and their eyes 
 beheld, all the days of their life. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 August J 1st. 
 This intense apathy in all of us is 
 the first great mystery of life ; it 
 stands in the way of every perception, 
 every virtue. There is no making 
 ourselves feel enough astonishment 
 at it. That the occupations or pas- 
 times of life should have no motive. 
 
226 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 is understandable ; but — That life it- 
 self should have no motive — that we 
 neither care to find out what it may- 
 lead to, nor to guard against its being 
 forever taken away from us — here is 
 a mystery indeed. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 
September ist. 
 If all the money in the world, notes 
 and gold, were destroyed in an in- 
 stant, it would leave the world neither 
 richer nor poorer than it was. But it 
 would leave the individual inhabitants 
 of it in different relations. 
 
 — Munera Pulveris. 
 
 September 2d. 
 
 The idea of self-denial for the sake 
 of posterity, of practising present 
 economy for the sake of debtors yet 
 unborn, of planting forests that our 
 descendants may live under their 
 shade, or of raising cities for future 
 nations to inhabit, never, I suppose, 
 efficiently takes place among publicly 
 
230 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 recognized motives of exertion. Yet 
 these are not the less our duties ; nor 
 is our part fitly sustained upon the 
 earth, unless the range of our intended 
 and deliberate usefulness include, not 
 only the companions but the succes- 
 sors of our pilgrimage. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 September jd. 
 The maximum of life can only be 
 reached by the maximum of virtue. 
 In this respect the law of human pop- 
 ulation differs wholly from that ani- 
 mal life. The multiplication of ani- 
 mals is checked only by want of food, 
 and by the hostility of races ; the pop- 
 ulation of the gnat is restrained by 
 the hunger of the swallow, and that 
 of the swallow by the scarcity of gnats. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 231 
 
 Man, considered as an animal, is 
 indeed limited by the same laws : hun- 
 ger, or plague, or war, are the neces- 
 sary and only restraints upon his in- 
 crease, — effectual restraints hitherto, 
 — his principal study having been 
 how most swiftly to destroy himself, 
 or ravage his dwelling-places, and his 
 highest skill directed to give range 
 to the famine, seed to the plague, 
 and sway to the sword. But, con- 
 sidered as other than an animal, his 
 increase is not limited by these laws. 
 It is limited only by the limits of 
 his courage and his love. Both of 
 these have their bounds, and ought 
 to have ; his race has its bounds also ; 
 but these have not yet been reached, 
 nor will be reached for ages. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
232 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 September 4th. 
 No true painter ever speaks, or 
 ever has spoken, much of his art. 
 The greatest speak nothing. Even 
 Reynolds is no exception, for he 
 wrote of all that he could not himself 
 do, and was utterly silent respecting 
 all that he himself did. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 September ^th. 
 Men cannot benefit those that are 
 with them as they can benefit those 
 who come after them ; and of all the 
 pulpits from which human voice is 
 ever sent forth, there is none from 
 which it reaches so far as from the 
 grave. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 233 
 
 September 6th. 
 No scene is continually and untir- 
 ingly loved, but one rich by joyful 
 human labor ; smooth in field ; fair 
 in garden ; full in orchard ; trim, 
 sweet, and frequent in homestead ; 
 ringing with voices of vivid exist- 
 ence. No air is sweet that is silent ; 
 it is only sweet when full of low 
 currents of undersound — triplets of 
 birds, and murmur and chirp of in- 
 sects, and deep-toned words of men, 
 and wayward trebles of childhood. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
 September yth. 
 Does a bird need to theorize about 
 buildiilg its nest, or boast of it when 
 built ? All good work is essentially 
 
234 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 done that way — without hesitation, 
 without difficulty, without boasting ; 
 and in the doers of the best, there is 
 an inner and involuntary power which 
 approximates literally to the instinct 
 of an animal — nay, I am certain that 
 in the most perfect human artists, rea- 
 son does not supersede instinct, but 
 is added to an instinct as much more 
 divine than that of the lower animals 
 as the human body is more beautiful 
 than theirs ; that a great singer sings 
 not with less instinct than the night- 
 ingale, but with more — only more va- 
 rious, applicable, and governable ; that 
 a great architect does not build with 
 less instinct than the beaver or the 
 bee, but with more — with an innate 
 cunning of proportion that embraces 
 all beauty, and a divine ingenuity 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 235 
 
 of skill that improvises all con- 
 struction. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies, 
 
 September 8th, 
 Do justice to your brother (you 
 can do that, whether you love him 
 or not), and you will come to love 
 him. But do injustice to him, be- 
 cause you don't love him ; and you 
 will come to hate him. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 September gth, 
 " Every tree that bringeth not forth 
 good fruit shall be hewn down, and 
 cast into the fire." Yes, verily : to 
 be baptized with fire, or to be cast 
 therein ; it is the choice set before 
 all men. The march-notes still mur- 
 
236 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 mur through the grated window, and 
 mingle with the sounding in our ears 
 of the sentence of judgment, which 
 the old Greek has written on that 
 Baptistery wall. Venice has made 
 her choice. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 September loth. 
 Every human action gains in honor, 
 in grace, in all true magnificence, by 
 its regard to things that are to come. 
 It is the far sight, the quiet and con- 
 fident patience, that, above all other 
 attributes, separate man from man, 
 and near him to his Maker ; and 
 there is no action nor art, whose 
 majesty we may not measure by this 
 test. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 237 
 
 September nth. 
 Art is neither to be achieved by 
 effort of thinking, nor explained by 
 accuracy of speaking. It is the in- 
 stinctive and necessary result of pow- 
 ers which can only be developed 
 through the mind of successive gen- 
 erations, and which finally burst into 
 life under social conditions as slow of 
 growth as the faculties they regulate. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 September I2th. 
 So then, you have the child's char- 
 acter in these four things — Humil- 
 ity, Faith, Charity, and Cheerfulness. 
 That's what you have got to be con- 
 verted to. " Except ye be converted 
 and become as little children." — You 
 hear much of conversion nowadays ; 
 
238 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 but people always seem to think they 
 have got to be made wretched by con- 
 version, — to be converted to long 
 faces. No, friends, you have got to 
 be converted to short ones ; you have 
 to repent into childhood, to repent 
 into delight, and delightsomeness. 
 
 — The Crcnvn of Wild Olive. 
 
 September 13th, 
 Have you ever thought seriously 
 of the meaning of that blessing given 
 to the peacemakers ? People are al- 
 ways expecting to get peace in heaven ; 
 but you know whatever peace they get 
 there will be ready made. 
 
 — The Eagle's Nest. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 239 
 
 September i^th. 
 Obedience is, indeed, founded on 
 a kind of freedom, else it would 
 become mere subjugation, but that 
 freedom is only granted that obedi- 
 ence may be more perfect ; and thus, 
 while a measure of license is necessary 
 to exhibit the individual energies of 
 things, the fairness and pleasantness 
 and perfection of them all consist in 
 their Restraint. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 September i^th. 
 
 As the art of life is learned, it will 
 be found at last that all lovely things 
 are also necessary, — the wild flower 
 by the wayside, as well as the tended 
 corn ; and the wild birds and creatures 
 of the forest, as well as the tended 
 
240 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 cattle ; because man doth not live by 
 bread only, but also by the desert 
 manna, by every wondrous word and 
 unknowable work of God. 
 
 — Unio this Last. 
 
 September i6th. 
 Ask the laborer in the field, at the 
 forge, or in the mine ; ask the patient, 
 delicate-fingered artisan, or the strong- 
 armed, fiery-hearted worker in bronze, 
 and in marble, and with the colors 
 of light ; and none of these, who are 
 true workmen, will ever tell you that 
 they have found the law of heaven an 
 unkind one — that in the sweat of 
 their face they should eat bread, till 
 they return to the ground ; nor that 
 they ever found it an unrewarded 
 obedience, if, indeed, it was rendered 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 241 
 
 faithfully to the command — "What- 
 soever thy hand findeth to do — do 
 it with thy might." 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies, 
 
 September I'jth, 
 Give a little love to a child, and 
 you get a great deal back. It loves 
 everything near it, when it is a right 
 kind of child ; would hurt nothing, 
 would give the best it has away, 
 always, if you need it ; does not lay 
 plans for getting everything in the 
 house for itself, and delights in help- 
 ing people ; you cannot please it so 
 much as by giving it a chance of 
 being useful, in ever so humble a 
 way. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
242 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 September i8th. 
 But, with all the efForts that the 
 best men make, much of their being 
 passes in a kind of dream, in which 
 they indeed move, and play their 
 parts sufficiently, to the eyes of their 
 fellow dreamers, but have no clear 
 consciousness of what is around them, 
 or within them ; blind to the one, 
 insensible to the other. I would not 
 press the definition into its darker 
 application to the dull heart and heavy 
 ear; I have to do with it only as it 
 refers to the too frequent condition 
 of natural existence, whether of nations 
 or individuals, settling commonly upon 
 them in proportion to their age. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 243 
 
 September igth, 
 A truly valuable or available thing 
 is that which leads to life with its 
 whole strength. In proportion as it 
 does not lead to life, or as its strength 
 is broken, it is less valuable; in pro- 
 portion as it leads away from life, it 
 is unvaluable or malignant. 
 
 — Unto this Last, 
 
 September 20th, 
 Have you ever considered what a 
 deep under meaning there lies, or at 
 least, may be read, if we choose, in 
 our custom of strewing flowers before 
 those whom we think most happy? 
 Do you suppose it is merely to de- 
 ceive them into the hope that happi- 
 ness is always to fall thus in showers 
 at their feet ? — that wherever they 
 
244 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 pass they will tread on herbs of sweet 
 scent, and that the rough ground will 
 be made smooth for them by depth 
 of roses ? So surely as they believe 
 that, they will have, instead, to walk 
 on bitter herbs and thorns ; and the 
 only softness to their feet will be of 
 snow. But it is not thus intended 
 they should believe; there is a better 
 meaning in that old custom. The 
 path of a good woman is indeed 
 strewn with flowers ; but they rise 
 behind her steps, not before them. 
 " Her feet have touched the mead- 
 ows, and left the daisies rosy." 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 September 2ist. 
 I have not time, however, to- 
 night to show you in how many ways 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 245 
 
 the power of capital is unjust ; but 
 remember this one great principle — 
 you will find it unfailing — that when- 
 ever money is the principal object of 
 life with either man or nation, it is 
 both got ill, and spent ill ; and does 
 harm both in the getting and spend- 
 ing ; but when it is not the principal 
 object, it and all other things will be 
 well got and well spent. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 September 2 2d, 
 The noblest word in the catalogue 
 of social virtue is " Loyalty," and the 
 sweetest which men have learned in 
 the pastures of the wilderness is 
 " Fold." 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 
 
246 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 September 2jd. 
 What is chiefly needed in England 
 at the present day is to show the 
 quantity of pleasure that may be ob- 
 tained by a consistent, well-adminis- 
 tered competence, modest, confessed, 
 and laborious. We need examples of 
 people who, leaving Heaven to de- 
 cide whether they are to rise in the 
 world, decide for themselves that they 
 will be happy in it, and have resolved 
 to seek — not greater wealth, but sim- 
 pler pleasure ; not higher fortune, but 
 deeper felicity ; making the first of 
 possessions, self-possession ; and hon- 
 oring themselves in the harmless pride 
 and calm pursuits of peace. 
 
 — Unto this Last. 
 
FROM JOHX RUSKIX 247 
 
 September 2^th. 
 Although your days are numbered, 
 and the following darkness sure, is 
 it necessary that you should share 
 the degradation of the brute, because 
 you are condemned to its mortality ; 
 or live the Hfe of the moth, and of the 
 worm, because you are to companion 
 them in the dust ? Not so ; we may 
 have but a few thousands of days to 
 spend, perhaps hundreds only — per- 
 haps, tens ; nay, the longest of our 
 time and best, looked back on, will 
 be but as a moment, as the twinkling 
 of an eye ; still, we are men, not in- 
 sects ; we are living spirits, not pass- 
 ing clouds. "He maketh the winds 
 His messengers ; the momentary fire. 
 His minister;" and shall we do less 
 than these 1 Let us do the work of 
 
248 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 men while we bear the form of them ; 
 and, as we snatch our narrow portion 
 of time out of Eternity, snatch also 
 our narrow inheritance of passion 
 out of Immortality — even though our 
 lives be as a vapor, that appeareth for 
 a little time, and then vanisheth away. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 September 2^th. 
 Taste is not only a part and an in- 
 dex of morality — it is the only mo- 
 rality. The first, and last, and closest 
 trial question to any living creature 
 is, "What do you like?" Tell me 
 what you like, and I'll tell you what 
 you are. Go out into the street, and 
 ask the first man or woman you meet, 
 what their " taste " is, and if they an- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 249 
 
 swer candidly, you know them, body 
 and soul. 
 
 — T/u Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 September 26th. 
 I have observed that in almost all 
 cathedrals, when the pulpits are pecu- 
 liarly magnificent, sermons are not 
 often preached from them ; but rather, 
 and especially if for any important 
 purpose, from some temporary erec- 
 tion in other parts of the building : 
 and though this may often be done 
 because the architect has consulted 
 the effect upon the eye more than 
 the convenience of the ear in the 
 placing of his larger pulpit, I think 
 it also proceeds in some measure from 
 a natural dislike in the preacher to 
 match himself with the magnificence 
 
250 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 of the rostrum, lest the sermon should 
 not be thought worthy of the place. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 September 2yth. 
 There seems to me to be a won- 
 derful misunderstanding among the 
 majority of architects of the present 
 day as to the very nature and mean- 
 ing of Originality, and of all wherein 
 it consists. Originality in expression 
 does not depend on invention of new 
 words ; nor originality in poetry on 
 invention of new measures ; nor, in 
 painting, on invention of new colors, 
 or new modes of using them. The 
 chords of music, the harmonies of 
 color, the general principles of the 
 arrangement of sculptural masses, 
 have been determined long ago, and, 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 251 
 
 in all probability, cannot be added to 
 any more than they can be altered. 
 Granting that they may be, such addi- 
 tions or alterations are much more 
 the work of time and of multitudes 
 than of individual inventors. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 September 28th. 
 Think you that judgment waits 
 till the doors of the grave are opened ? 
 It waits at the doors of your houses — 
 it waits at the corners of your streets ; 
 we are in the midst of judgment — 
 the insects that we crush are our 
 judges — the moments we fret away 
 are our judges — the elements that 
 feed us, judge, as they minister — 
 and the pleasures that deceive us, 
 judge, as they indulge. Let us, for 
 
252 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 our lives, do the work of Men while 
 we bear the Form of them, if indeed 
 those lives are Not as a vapor, and do 
 Not vanish away. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 September 2()th. 
 The first duty of government is to 
 see that the people have food, fuel, 
 and clothes. The second, that they 
 have means of moral and intellectual 
 education. 
 
 — Fors Clavigera. 
 
 September joth. 
 And though it is the nobility of the 
 highest creatures to look forward to, 
 and partly to understand the changes 
 which are appointed for them, prepar- 
 ing for them beforehand ; and if, as 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 253 
 
 is usual with appointed changes, they 
 be into a higher state, even desiring 
 them, and rejoicing in the hope of 
 them, yet it is the strength of every 
 creature, be it changeful or not, to 
 rest, for the time being, contented 
 with the conditions of its existence, 
 and striving only to bring about the 
 changes which it desires, by fulfilling 
 to the uttermost the duties for which 
 its present state is appointed and con- 
 tinued. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
OCTOBER 
 
October 1st, 
 Care in no wise to make more of 
 money, but care to make much of it ; 
 remembering always the great, pal- 
 pable, inevitable fact — the rule and 
 root of all economy — that what one 
 person has another cannot have ; and 
 that every atom of substance, of what- 
 ever kind, used or consumed, is so 
 much human life spent ; which, if it 
 issue in the saving present life, or 
 gaining more, is well spent, but if not 
 is either so much life prevented or so 
 much slain. 
 
 — Unto this Last, 
 
258 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 October 2d, 
 
 And, whatever our station in life 
 may be, at this crisis, those of us who 
 mean to fulfil our duty ought, first, 
 to live on as little as we can ; and, 
 secondly, to do all the wholesome 
 work for it we can, and to spend all 
 we can spare in doing all the sure 
 good we can. 
 
 And sure good is first in feeding 
 people, then in dressing people, then 
 in lodging people, and lastly in rightly 
 pleasing people, with arts, or sciences, 
 or any other subject of thought. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies, 
 
 October jd. 
 And all delight in fine art, and all 
 love of it, resolve themselves into 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 259 
 
 simple love of that which deserves 
 love. That deserving is the quality 
 which we call " loveliness " — (we 
 ought to have an opposite word, 
 hateliness, to be said of the things 
 which deserve to be hated) ; and it 
 is not an indifferent nor optional 
 thing whether we love this or that ; 
 but it is just the vital function of all 
 our being. What we like determines 
 what we are^ and is the sign of what 
 we are ; and to teach taste is inevita- 
 bly to form character. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 October 4th, 
 When the sermon is good we need 
 not much concern ourselves about the 
 form of the pulpit. But sermons can- 
 not always be good ; and I believe 
 
260 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 that the temper in which the congre- 
 gation set themselves to listen may be 
 in some degree modified by their per- 
 ception of fitness or unfitness, im- 
 pressiveness or vulgarity, in the dis- 
 position of the place appointed for 
 the speaker, — not to the same de- 
 gree, but somewhat in the same way, 
 that they may be influenced by his 
 own gestures or expression, irrespec- 
 tive of the sense of what he says. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 October ^th. 
 We think too much in our benevo- 
 lent eflforts, more multiplied and more 
 vain day by day, of bettering men by 
 giving them advice and instruction. 
 There are few who will take either : 
 the chief thing they need is occupa- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 261 
 
 tion. I do not mean work in the 
 sense of bread, — I mean work in the 
 sense of mental interest ; for those 
 who either are placed above the ne- 
 cessity of labor for their bread, or 
 who will not work although they 
 should. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 October 6th, 
 The entire object of true educa- 
 tion is to make people not merely do 
 the right things, but enjoy the right 
 things — not merely industrious, but 
 to love industry — not merely learned, 
 but to love knowledge — not merely 
 pure, but to love purity — not merely 
 just, but to hunger and thirst after 
 justice. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
262 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 October yth. 
 Among the losses, all the more fa- 
 tal in being unfelt, brought upon us 
 by the fury and vulgarity of modern 
 life, I count for one of the saddest, 
 the loss of the wish to gather a flower 
 in travelling. 
 
 — Proserpina. 
 
 October 8th, 
 
 The exaltation, the sin, and the 
 punishment of Tyre have been re- 
 corded for us, in perhaps the most 
 touching words ever uttered by the 
 Prophets of Israel against the cities 
 of the stranger. But we read them 
 as a lovely song ; and close our ears 
 to the sternness of their warning : 
 for the very depth of the Fall of 
 Tyre has blinded us to its reality, 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 263 
 
 and we forget, as we watch the 
 bleaching of the rocks between the 
 sunshine and the sea, that they were 
 once " as in Eden, the garden of 
 God." 
 
 Her successor, like her in perfec- 
 tion of beauty, though less in endur- 
 ance of dominion, is still left for our 
 beholding in the final period of her 
 decline : a ghost upon the sands of 
 the sea, so weak — so quiet, — so be- 
 reft of all but her loveliness, that we 
 might well doubt, as we watched her 
 faint reflection in the mirage of the 
 lagoon, which was the City, and which 
 the Shadow. 
 
 I would endeavor to trace the lines 
 of this image before it be for ever lost, 
 and to record, as far as I may, the 
 warning which seems to me to be ut- 
 
264 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 tered by every one of the fast-gaining 
 waves, that beat, like passing bells, 
 against the Stones of Venice. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 October gth. 
 Ah, masters of modern science, 
 give me back my Athena out of your 
 vials, and seal, if it may be, once 
 more, Asmodeus therein. You have 
 divided the elements, and united them ; 
 enslaved them upon the earth, and dis- 
 cerned them in the stars. Teach us, 
 now, but this of them, which is all 
 that man may know, — that the Air 
 is given to him for his life ; and 
 the Rain for his thirst, and for his 
 baptism : and the Fire for warmth ; 
 and the Sun for sight ; and the Earth 
 for his meat — and his Rest. 
 
 — The Queen of the Air. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 265 
 
 October loth. 
 Whenever in any religious faith, 
 dark or bright, we allow our minds 
 to dwell upon the points in which we 
 differ from other people, we are wrong, 
 and in the devil's power. That is the 
 essence of the Pharisee's thanksgiving 
 — " Lord, I thank thee that I am not 
 as other men are." At every moment 
 of our lives we should be trying to find 
 out, not in what we differ from other 
 people, but in what we agree with 
 them ; and the moment we find we 
 can agree as to anything that should 
 be done, kind or good, (and who but 
 fools couldn't ?) then do it ; push at 
 it together ; you can't quarrel in a 
 side-by-side push ; but the moment 
 that even the best men stop pushing, 
 and begin talking, they mistake their 
 
266 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 pugnacity for piety, and it*s all 
 over. 
 
 '—Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 October nth. 
 It is not enough to find men abso- 
 lute subsistence ; we should think of 
 the manner of life which our demands 
 necessitate ; and endeavor, as far as 
 may be, to make all our needs such 
 as may, in the supply of them, raise, 
 as well as feed, the poor. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 October I2th, 
 And if, on due and honest thought 
 over these things, it seems that the 
 kind of existence to which men are 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 267 
 
 now summoned by every plea of pity 
 and claim of right, may, for some time 
 at least, not be a luxurious one, con- 
 sider whether, even supposing it 
 guiltless, luxury would be desired by 
 any of us if we saw clearly at our 
 sides the suffering which accompanies 
 it in the world. 
 
 — C/nto this Last, 
 
 October ijth. 
 It is quite true, infallibly true, that 
 if any man will not work, neither 
 should he eat — think of that, and 
 every time you sit down to your din- 
 ner, ladies and gentlemen, say sol- 
 emnly, before you ask a blessing, 
 " How much work have I done to- 
 day for my dinner ? " 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
268 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 October 14th. 
 Good architecture is the work of 
 good and believing men ; therefore, 
 you say, at least some people say, 
 " Good architecture must essentially 
 have been the work of the clergy, not 
 of the laity." No — a thousand times 
 no ; good architecture has always 
 been the work of the commonalty, 
 not of the clergy. What, you say, 
 those glorious cathedrals — the pride 
 of Europe — did their builders not 
 form Gothic architecture ? No ; they 
 corrupted Gothic architecture. Gothic 
 was formed in the baron's castle, and 
 the burgher's street. It was formed 
 by the thoughts, and hands, and pow- 
 ers of free citizens and warrior kings. 
 By the monk it was used as an instru- 
 ment for the aid of his superstition ; 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 269 
 
 when that superstition became a beau- 
 tiful madness, and the best hearts of 
 Europe vainly dreamed and pined in 
 the cloister, and vainly raged and per- 
 ished in the crusade — through that 
 fury of perverted faith and wasted war, 
 the Gothic rose also to its loveliest, 
 most fantastic, and, finally, most fool- 
 ish dreams ; and, in those dreams, was 
 lost. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 October i^th. 
 We cannot justly interpret the re- 
 ligion of any people, unless we are 
 prepared to admit that we ourselves, 
 as well as they, are liable to error in 
 matters of faith ; and that the con- 
 victions of others, however singular, 
 may in some points have been well 
 
270 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 founded, while our own, however rea- 
 sonable, may in some particulars be 
 mistaken. 
 
 — The Queen of the Air. 
 
 October i6th. 
 Some years ago, in conversation 
 with an artist whose works, perhaps, 
 alone, in the present day, unite per- 
 fection of drawing with resplendence 
 of color, the writer made some in- 
 quiry respecting the general means 
 by which this latter quaHty was most 
 easily to be attained. The reply was 
 as concise as it was comprehensive — 
 " Know what you have to do, and do 
 it " — comprehensive, not only as re- 
 garded the branch of art to which it 
 temporarily applied, but as express- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 271 
 
 ing the great principle of success in 
 every direction of human effort ; for 
 I beHeve that failure is less frequently 
 attributable to either insufficiency of 
 means or impatience of labor, than 
 to a confused understanding of the 
 thing actually to be done. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 October ijth. 
 Raise the veil boldly ; face the 
 light ; and if, as yet, the light of the 
 eye can only be through tears and 
 the light of the body through sack- 
 cloth, go thou forth weeping, bear- 
 ing precious seed, until the time come, 
 and the kingdom, when Christ's gift 
 of bread and bequest of peace shall 
 be " Unto this last as unto thee ; ** 
 
272 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 and when, for earth^s severed multi- 
 tudes of the wicked and the weary- 
 there shall be holier reconciliation 
 than that of the narrow home, and 
 calm economy where the Wicked 
 cease — not from trouble, but from 
 troubling — and the Weary are at rest. 
 
 — U?ito this Last. 
 
 October i8th. 
 In all my past work, my endeavor 
 has been to show that good architec- 
 ture is essentially religious — the pro- 
 duction of a faithful and virtuous, not 
 of an infidel and corrupted people. 
 But in the course of doing this, I 
 have had also to show that good archi- 
 tecture is not ecclesiastical. People 
 are so apt to look upon religion as 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 273 
 
 the business of the clergy, not their 
 own, that the moment they hear of 
 anything dependent on " rehgion," 
 they think it must also have de- 
 pended on the priesthood ; and I 
 have had to take what place was to 
 be occupied between these two er- 
 rors, and fight both, often with seem- 
 ing contradiction. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 October igth. 
 Never had city a more glorious 
 Bible. Among the nations of the 
 North, a rude and shadowy sculp- 
 ture filled their temples with confused 
 and hardly legible imagery ; but, for 
 her, the skill and the treasures of 
 the East had gilded every letter, and 
 illumined every page, till the Book- 
 
274 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 Temple shone from afar off like the 
 star of the Magi. In other cities, 
 the meetings of the people were often 
 in places withdrawn from religious as- 
 sociation, subject to violence and to 
 change ; and on the grass of the dan- 
 gerous rampart, and in the dust of 
 the troubled street, there were deeds 
 done and counsels taken, which, if 
 we cannot justify, we may sometimes 
 forgive. But the sins of Venice, 
 whether in her palace or in her pi- 
 azza, were done with the Bible at her 
 right hand. The walls on which its 
 testimony was written were separated 
 but by a few inches of marble from 
 those which guarded the secrets of 
 her councils, or confined the victims 
 of her policy. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 275 
 
 October 20th, 
 Exactly in proportion to the de- 
 gree in which we become' narrow in 
 the cause and conception of our pas- 
 sions, incontinent in the utterance of 
 them, feeble of perseverance in them, 
 sullied or shameful in the indulgence 
 of them, their expression by musical 
 sound becomes broken, mean, fatui- 
 tous, and at last impossible ; the meas- 
 ured waves of the air of heaven will 
 not lend themselves to expression of 
 ultimate vice, it must be forever sunk 
 into discordance or silence. 
 
 — The Queen of the Air, 
 
 October 21st, 
 The book I called " The Seven 
 Lamps " was to show that certain 
 
276 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 right states of temper and moral feel- 
 ing were the magic powers by which 
 all good architecture, without excep- 
 tion, had been produced. " The 
 Stones of Venice " had, from begin- 
 ning to end, no other aim than to 
 show that the Gothic architecture of 
 Venice had arisen out of, and indi- 
 cated in all its features, a state of 
 pure national faith, and of domestic 
 virtue ; and that its Renaissance ar- 
 chitecture had arisen out of, and in 
 all its features indicated, a state of 
 concealed national infidelity, and of 
 domestic corruption. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 October 2 2d, 
 Now this window commanded a 
 direct view of the range of moun- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 277 
 
 tains, which, as I told you before, 
 overhung the Treasure Valley, and 
 more especially of the peak from 
 which fell the Golden River. It was 
 just at the close of the day, and when 
 Gluck sat down at the window, he 
 saw the rocks of the mountain tops, 
 all crimson, and purple with the sun- 
 set ; and there were bright tongues 
 of fiery cloud burning and quivering 
 about them ; and the river, brighter 
 than all, fell, in a waving column of 
 pure gold, from precipice to precipice, 
 with the double arch of a broad 
 purple rainbow stretched across it, 
 flushing and fading alternately in the 
 wreaths of spray. 
 
 — The King of the Golden River. 
 
278 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 October 2jd, 
 Music is thus, in her health, the 
 teacher of perfect order, and is the 
 voice of the obedience of angels, and 
 the companion of the course of the 
 spheres of heaven ; and in her deprav- 
 ity she is also the teacher of perfect 
 disorder and disobedience, and the 
 Gloria in Excelsis becomes the Mar- 
 seillaise. 
 
 — The Queen of the Air. 
 
 October 24th. 
 There is no law, no principle, based 
 on past practice, which may not be 
 overthrown in a moment, by the aris- 
 ing of a new condition, or the inven- 
 tion of a new material ; and the most 
 rational, if not the only, mode of 
 averting the danger of an utter disso- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 279 
 
 lution of all that is systematic and 
 consistent in our practice, or of an- 
 cient authority in our judgment, is to 
 cease, for a little while, our endeavors 
 to deal with the multiplying host of 
 particular abuses, restraints, or require- 
 ments ; and endeavor to determine, as 
 the guides of every effort, some con- 
 stant, general, and irrefragable laws of 
 right — laws which, based upon man's 
 nature, not upon his knowledge, may 
 possess so far the unchangeableness of 
 the one, as that neither the increase 
 nor imperfection of the other may be 
 able to assault or invalidate them. 
 
 — T/te Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 October 2t^th. 
 The first lecture says or tries to say, 
 that, life being very short, and the 
 
280 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 quiet hours of it few, we ought to 
 waste none of them in reading value- 
 less books ; and that valuable books 
 should, in a civilized country, be within 
 the reach of every one, printed in 
 excellent form, for a just price ; but 
 not in any vile, vulgar or by reason 
 of smallness of type physically injuri- 
 ous form, at a vile price. For we 
 none of us need many books, and 
 those which we need ought to be 
 
 o 
 
 clearly printed, on the best paper, and 
 strongly bound. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 October 26th, 
 
 The wonder has always been great 
 
 to me that heroism has never been 
 
 supposed to be in any wise consistent 
 
 with the practice of supplying people 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 281 
 
 with food, or clothes ; but rather with 
 that of quartering one's self upon 
 them for food, and stripping them of 
 their clothes. Spoiling of armor is 
 an heroic deed in all ages; but the 
 selling of clothes, old or new, has 
 never taken any color of magnanim- 
 ity. Yet one does not see why 
 feeding the hungry and clothing the 
 naked should ever become base busi- 
 ness, even when engaged in on a large 
 scale. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 October 2'/th, 
 The impotent feeling of romance, 
 so singularly characteristic of this cen- 
 tury, may indeed gild, but never save 
 the remains of those mightier ages to 
 which they are attached like climbing 
 
282 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 flowers ; and they must be torn away 
 from the magnificent fragments, if we 
 would see them as they stood in their 
 own strength. Those feelings, always 
 as fruitless as they are f3nd, are in 
 Venice not only incapable of protect- 
 ing, but even of discerning, the ob- 
 jects of which they ought to have been 
 attached. The Venice of modern 
 fiction and drama is a thing of yester- 
 day, a mere effloresence of decay, a 
 stage dream which the first ray of day- 
 light must dissipate into dust. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 October 28th. 
 All great song, from the first day 
 when human lips contrived syllables, 
 has been sincere song. With deliber- 
 ate didactic purpose the tragedians — 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 283 
 
 with pure and native passion the 
 lyrists — fitted their perfect words to 
 their dearest faiths. 
 
 — The Queeti of the Air. 
 
 October 2gth, 
 If there is any one point which, in 
 six thousand years of thinking about 
 right and wrong, wise and good men 
 have agreed upon, or successively by 
 experience discovered, it is that God 
 dislikes idle and cruel people more 
 than any others ; — that His first order 
 is, "Work while you have light;" 
 and His second, " Be merciful while 
 you have mercy." 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 October ^oth. 
 Getting on — but where to ? Gath- 
 ering together — but how much .^ Do 
 
284 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 you mean to gather always — never to 
 spend? If so, I wish you joy of your 
 goddess, for I am just as well off as 
 you, without the trouble of worship- 
 ping her at all. But if you do not 
 spend, somebody else will — somebody 
 else must. 
 
 — The Crown of JVild Olive. 
 
 October jist. 
 Never teach a child anything of 
 which you are not yourself sure ; and, 
 above all, if you feel anxious to force 
 anything into its mind in tender 
 years, that the virtue of youth and 
 early association may fasten it there, 
 be sure it is no lie which you thus 
 sanctify. 
 
 — Time and Tide. 
 
NOVEMBER 
 
November ist. 
 The purest forms of our own re- 
 ligion have always consisted in sacri- 
 ficing less things to win greater, time 
 to win eternity, the world to win the 
 skies. The order, " sell that thou 
 hast,'* is not given without the prom- 
 ise, " thou shalt have treasure in 
 heaven ; " and well for the modern 
 Christian if he accepts the alternative 
 as his Master left it, and does not 
 practically read the command and 
 promise thus : " Sell that thou hast 
 in the best market, and thou shalt 
 have treasure in eternity also." 
 
 — The Queen of the Air, 
 
288 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 November 2d. 
 However mean or inconsiderable 
 the act, there is something in the well 
 doing of it, which has fellowship with 
 the noblest forms of manly virtue ; 
 and the truth, decision, and temper- 
 ance, which we reverently regard as 
 honorable conditions of the spiritual 
 being, have a representative or deriva- 
 tive influence over the works of the 
 hand, the movements of the frame, 
 and the action of the intellect. 
 
 — The Seven Lamp of Architecture. 
 
 November jd, 
 " Work while you have light," es- 
 pecially while you have the light of 
 morning. There are few things more 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 289 
 
 wonderful to me than that old people 
 never tell young ones how precious 
 their youth is. They sometimes sen- 
 timentally regret their own earlier 
 days ; sometimes prudently forget 
 them ; often foolishly rebuke the 
 young, often more foolishly indulge, 
 often most foolishly thwart and re- 
 strain, but scarcely ever warn or watch 
 them. Remember, then, that I, at 
 least, have warned you^ that the hap- 
 piness of your life, and its power, and 
 its part and rank in earth or in heav- 
 en, depend on the way you pass your 
 days now. They are not to be sad 
 days ; far from that, the first duty of 
 young people is to be delighted and 
 delightful ; but they are to be in the 
 deepest sense solemn days. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies, 
 
290 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 November 4th. 
 I never can make out how it is that 
 a knight -^rx2iXit does not expect to be 
 paid for his trouble, but a^^^/^r-errant 
 always does ; — that people are willing 
 to take hard knocks for nothing, but 
 never to sell ribands cheap ; — that 
 they are ready to go on fervent cru- 
 sades to recover the tomb of a buried 
 God, but never on any travels to fulfil 
 the orders of a living one ; — that they 
 will go anywhere barefoot to preach 
 their faith, but must be well bribed to 
 practise it, and are perfectly ready to 
 give the Gospel gratis, but never the 
 loaves and fishes. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 November ^th. 
 And although the last few eventful 
 years, fraught with change to the face 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 291 
 
 of the whole earthy have been more 
 fatal in their influence on Venice than 
 the ^yt hundred that preceded them ; 
 though the noble landscape of ap- 
 proach to her can now be seen no 
 more, or seen only by a glance, as the 
 engine slackens its rushing on the 
 iron line ; and though many of her 
 palaces are forever defaced, and many 
 in desecrated ruins, there is still so 
 much of magic in her aspect, that the 
 hurried traveller, who must leave her 
 before the wonder of that first aspect 
 has been worn away, may still be led 
 to forget the humility of her origin, 
 and to shut his eyes to the depth of 
 her desolation. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
292 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 November 6th. 
 By care and tenderness, we can ex- 
 tend the range of lovely life in plants 
 and animals ; by our neglect and cru- 
 elty, we can arrest it, and bring pesti- 
 lence in its stead. Again, by right 
 discipline we can increase our strength 
 of noble will and passion or destroy 
 both. 
 
 — The Queen of the Air. 
 
 November yth, 
 I have given a considerable part of 
 my life to the investigation of Vene- 
 tian painting, and the result of that 
 inquiry was my fixing upon one man 
 as the greatest of all Venetians, and, 
 therefore, as I believed, of all paint- 
 ers whatsoever. I formed this faith 
 (whether right or wrong matters at 
 present nothing), in the supremacy of 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 293 
 
 the painter Tintoret, under a roof 
 covered with his pictures ; and of those 
 pictures, three of the noblest were 
 then in the form of shreds of ragged 
 canvas, mixed up with the laths of 
 the roof, rent through by three Aus- 
 trian shells. Now it is not every lec- 
 turer who could tell you that he had 
 seen three of his favorite pictures torn 
 to rags by bomb shells. And after 
 such a sight, it is not every lecturer 
 who would tell you that, nevertheless, 
 war was the foundation of all great art. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 November 8th. 
 There is always more to be taught 
 of absolute, uncontrovertible knowl- 
 edge, open to its capacity, than any 
 child can learn ; there is no need to 
 
294 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 teach it anything doubtful. Better 
 that it should be ignorant of a thou- 
 sand truths, than have consecrated in 
 its heart a single lie. 
 
 — Time and Tide. 
 
 November gth. 
 The flower is the end or proper 
 object of the seed, not the seed of 
 the flower. The reasons for seeds is 
 that flowers may be ; not the reason 
 of flowers that seeds may be. The 
 flower itself is the creature which the 
 spirit makes ; only, in connection with 
 its perfectness is placed the giving 
 birth to its successor. 
 
 — The Queen of the Air, 
 
 November loth. 
 And as thus every action, down 
 even to the drawing of a line or utter- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 295 
 
 ance of a syllable, is capable of a pe- 
 culiar dignity in the manner of it, 
 which we sometimes express by saying 
 it is truly done (as a line or tone is 
 true), so also it is capable of dignity 
 still higher in the motive of it. For 
 there is no action so slight, nor so 
 mean, but it may be done to a great 
 purpose, and ennobled therefore ; nor 
 is any purpose so great but that slight 
 actions may help it, and may be so 
 done as to help it much, most espe- 
 cially that chief of all purposes, the 
 pleasing of God. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 November nth. 
 Now, therefore, see that no day 
 passes in which you do not make 
 
296 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 yourself a somewhat better creature : 
 and in order to do that, find out, first, 
 what you are now. Do not think 
 vaguely about it ; take pen and paper, 
 and write down as accurate a descrip- 
 tion of yourself as you can, with the 
 date to it. If you dare not do so, 
 find out why you dare not, and try to 
 get strength of heart enough to look 
 yourself fairly in the face, in mind as 
 well as body. I do not doubt but 
 that the mind is a less pleasant thing 
 to look at than the face, and for that 
 very reason it needs more looking at ; 
 so always have two mirrors on your 
 toilet table, and see that with proper 
 care you dress body and mind before 
 them daily. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies, 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 297 
 
 November I2th. 
 You may imagine that your work 
 is wholly foreign to, and separate from 
 mine. So far from that, all the pure 
 and noble arts of peace are founded 
 on war ; no great art ever yet rose on 
 earth, but among a nation of soldiers. 
 There is no art among a shepherd 
 people, if it remains at peace. There 
 is no art among an agricultural people, 
 if it remains at peace. Commerce is 
 barely consistent with fine art ; but 
 cannot produce it. Manufacture not 
 only is unable to produce it, but in- 
 variably destroys whatever seeds of it 
 exist. There is no great art possible 
 to a nation but that which is based on 
 battle. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive, 
 
298 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 November ijth. 
 Well might it seem that such a 
 city had owed her existence rather to 
 the rod of the enchanter, than the 
 fear of the fugitive ; that the waters 
 which encircled her had been chosen 
 for the mirror of her state, rather than 
 the shelter of her nakedness ; and 
 that all which in nature was wild or 
 merciless, — Time and Decay, as well 
 as the waves and tempests, — had been 
 won to adorn her instead of to destroy, 
 and might still spare, for ages to come, 
 that beauty which seemed to have 
 fixed for its throne the sands of the 
 hour-glass as well as of the sea. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 November 14th. 
 We will take the bird first. It is 
 little more than a drift of the air 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 299 
 
 brought into form by plumes ; the air 
 is in all its quills, it breathes through 
 its whole frame and flesh, and glows 
 with air in its flying, like blown flame ; 
 its rests upon the air, subdues it, sur- 
 passes it, outraces it, — is the air, con- 
 scious of itself, conquering itself, rul- 
 ing itself 
 
 — The Queen of the Air. 
 
 November i^th. 
 It is very strange to me to discover 
 this ; and very dreadful — but I saw it 
 to be quite an undeniable fact. The 
 common notion that peace and the 
 virtues of civil life flourished together, 
 I found to be wholly untenable. 
 Peace and the vices of civil life only 
 flourish together. We talk of peace 
 and learning, and of peace and plenty. 
 
300 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 and of peace and civilization; but I 
 found that those were not the words 
 which the Muse of History coupled 
 together : that on her lips, the words 
 were — peace and sensuality, peace and 
 selfishness, peace and corruption, peace 
 and death. I found, in brief, that all 
 great nations learned their truth of 
 word, and strength of thought, in war ; 
 that they were nourished in war, and 
 wasted by peace ; taught by war, and 
 deceived by peace ; trained by war, 
 and betrayed by peace ; — in a word, 
 that they were born in war and expired 
 in peace. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 November i6th. 
 All false thoughts and seeings come 
 mainly of our thinking of what we 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 301 
 
 have no business with, and looking 
 for things we want to see, instead of 
 things that ought to be seen. 
 
 — Time and Tide. 
 
 November ijth. 
 Great art is the expression of the 
 mind of a great man, and mean art, 
 that of the want of mind of a weak 
 man. A foolish person builds fool- 
 lishly, and a wise one, sensibly ; a 
 virtuous one, beautifully ; and a vi- 
 cious one, basely. If stone work is 
 well put together, it means that a 
 thoughtful man planned it, and a care- 
 ful man cut it, and an honest man 
 cemented it. If it has too much orna- 
 ment, it means that its carver was too 
 greedy of pleasure ; if too little, that 
 he was rude, or insensitive, or stupid, 
 
302 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 and the like. So that when once you 
 have learned how to spell these most 
 precious of all legends, — pictures and 
 buildings, — you may read the char- 
 acters of men, and of nations, in their 
 art, as in a mirror; nay, as in a micro- 
 scope, and magnified a hundredfold ; 
 for the character becomes passionate 
 in the art, and intensifies itself in all 
 its noblest or meanest delights. 
 
 — Queen of the Air. 
 
 November i8th. 
 We treat God with irreverence by 
 banishing Him from our thoughts, 
 not by referring to His will on slight 
 occasions. His is not the finite au- 
 thority or intelligence which cannot 
 be troubled with small things. There 
 is nothing so small but what we may 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 303 
 
 honor God by asking His guidance 
 of it, or insult Him by taking it in 
 our own hands ; and what is true of 
 the Deity is equally true of His 
 Revelation. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 November igth. 
 Write down then, frankly, what 
 you are, or, at least, what you think 
 yourself, not dwelling upon those in- 
 evitable faults which I have just told 
 you are of little consequence, and 
 which the action of a right life will 
 shake or smooth away ; but that you 
 may determine to the best of your 
 intelligence what you are good for, 
 and can be made into. You will find 
 that the mere resolve not to be use- 
 less, and the honest desire to help 
 
304 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 Other people, will, in the quickest and 
 delicatest ways, improve yourself. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 November 20th. 
 And from the earliest incipient civil- 
 ization until now, the population of 
 the earth divides itself, when you look 
 at it widely, into two races ; one of 
 workers, and the other of players — 
 one tilling the ground, manufacturing, 
 building, and otherwise providing for 
 the necessities of life ; — the other part 
 proudly idle, and continually there- 
 fore needing recreation, in which they 
 use the productive and laborious or- 
 ders partly as their cattle, and partly 
 as their puppets or pieces in the game 
 of death. 
 
 — Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 305 
 
 November 2ist, 
 In the olden days of travelling, 
 now to return no more, in which dis- 
 tance could not be vanquished with- 
 out toil, but in which that toil was 
 rewarded, partly by the power of 
 deliberate survey of the countries 
 through which the journey lay, and 
 partly by the happiness of the even- 
 ing hours, when, from the top of the 
 last hill he had surmounted, the trav- 
 eller beheld the quiet village where he 
 was to rest, scattered among the mead- 
 ows beside its valley stream ; or, from 
 the long-hoped-for turn in the dusty 
 perspective of the causeway, saw, for 
 the first time, the towers of some 
 famed city, faint in the rays of sun- 
 set — hours of peaceful and thought- 
 ful pleasure, for which the rush of 
 
306 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 the arrival in the railway station is 
 perhaps not always, or to all men, an 
 equivalent, — in those days, I say, 
 when there was something more to 
 be anticipated and remembered in the 
 first aspect of each successive halting- 
 place, than a new arrangement of glass 
 roofing and iron girder, there were few 
 moments of which the recollection was 
 more fondly cherished by the travel- 
 ler than that which, as I endeavored 
 to describe in the close of the last 
 chapter, brought him within sight of 
 Venice, as his gondola shot into the 
 open lagoon from the canal of Mestre. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 November 2 2d. 
 Of all facts concerning art, this is 
 the one most necessary to be known, 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 307 
 
 that, while manufacture is the work 
 of hands only, art is the work of the 
 whole spirit of man ; and as that 
 spirit is, so is the deed of it ; and by- 
 whatever power of vice or virtue any- 
 art is produced, the same vice or vir- 
 tue it reproduces and teaches. That 
 which is born of evil begets evil ; and 
 that which is born of valor and honor, 
 teaches valor and honor. All art is 
 either infection or education. It must 
 be one or other of these. 
 
 — The Queeji of the Air. 
 
 November 2jd, 
 
 For it is an asserted truth that, 
 whenever the faculties of men are at 
 their fulness, they must express them- 
 selves by art ; and to say that a state 
 is without such expression, is to say 
 
308 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 that it is sunk from its proper level 
 of manly nature. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 November 2/j.th, 
 " Time is money '' — so say your 
 practised merchants and economists. 
 None of them, however, I fancy, as 
 they draw towards death, find that 
 the reverse is true, and that " money 
 is time.'* 
 
 — Time and Tide. 
 
 November 2^th. 
 As I myself look at it, there is no 
 fault nor folly of my life — and both 
 have been many and great — that does 
 not rise up against me, and take away 
 my joy, and shorten my power of pos- 
 session of sight, of understanding. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 309 
 
 And every past effort of my life, 
 every gleam of rightness or good in 
 it, is with me now, to help me in my 
 grasp of this art, and its vision. So 
 far as I can rejoice in, or interpret 
 either, my power is owing to what of 
 right there is in me. I dare to say it, 
 that, because through all my life I have 
 desired good, and not evil ; because I 
 have been kind to many ; have wished 
 to be kind to all ; have wilfully in- 
 jured none ; and because I have loved 
 much, and not selfishly ; therefore, 
 the morning light is yet visible to 
 me on those hills, and you, who read, 
 may trust my thought and word in 
 such work as I have to do for you ; 
 and you will be glad afterwards that 
 you have trusted them. 
 
 — The Queen of the Air. 
 
310 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 November 26th, 
 Architecture is the art which so dis- 
 poses and adorns the edifices raised 
 by man, for whatsoever uses, that the 
 sight of them may contribute to his 
 mental health, power, and pleasure. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 
 
 November 2yth, 
 Of course we are ignorant and blind 
 creatures, and we cannot know what 
 seeds of good may be in present suf- 
 fering, or present crime ; but with 
 what we cannot know, we are not 
 concerned. It is conceivable that 
 murderers and liars may in some dis- 
 tant world be exalted into a higher 
 humanity than they could have 
 reached without hoi^^*<ide or false- 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 311 
 
 hood ; but the contingency is not one 
 by which our actions should be guided. 
 There is, indeed, a better hope that 
 the beggar, who Hes at our gates in 
 misery, may, within gates of pearl, 
 be comforted, but the Master, whose 
 words are our only authority for think- 
 ing so, never Himself inflicted disease 
 as a blessing, nor sent away the hun- 
 gry unfed, or the wounded unhealed. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 November 28th, 
 The broad fact is, that a human 
 creature of the highest race, and most 
 perfect as a human thing, is invaria- 
 bly both kind and true ; and that as 
 you lower the race, you get cruelty 
 and falsene*'-' r^s you get deformity ; 
 
312 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 and this so steadily and assuredly, 
 that the two great words which, in 
 their first use, meant only perfection 
 of race, have come, by consequence 
 of the invariable connection of virtue 
 with the fine human nature, both to 
 signify benevolence of disposition. 
 The word generous, and the word 
 gentle, both, in their origin, meant 
 only " of pure race," but because 
 charity and tenderness are insepara- 
 ble from this purity of blood, the 
 words which once stood only for 
 pride, now stand as synonyms for 
 virtue. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 November 2gth. 
 Now Venice, as she was once the 
 most religious, was in her fall the 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 313 
 
 most corrupt, of European states ; and 
 as she was in her strength the centre 
 of the pure currents of Christian 
 architecture, so she is in her decline 
 the source of the Renaissance. It 
 was the originality and splendor of 
 the palaces of Vicenza and Venice 
 which gave this school its eminence 
 in the eyes of Europe ; and the dying 
 city, magnificent in her dissipation, 
 and graceful in her follies, obtained 
 wider worship in her decrepitude than 
 in her youth, and sank from the midst 
 of her admirers into the grave. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 November ^oth. 
 Of Turner's life, and of its good 
 and evil, both great, but the good 
 
314 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 immeasurably the greater, his work is 
 in all things a perfect and transparent 
 evidence. His biography is simply, 
 " He did this, nor will ever another 
 do its like again." 
 
 — The Queen of the Air. 
 
DECEMBER 
 
December ist. 
 All the sin of men I esteem as their 
 disease, not their nature ; as a folly 
 which may be prevented, not a neces- 
 sity which must be accepted. And 
 my wonder, even when things are at 
 their worst, is always at the height 
 which this human nature can attain. 
 Thinking it high, I find it always a 
 higher thing than I thought it ; while 
 those who think it low, find it, and 
 will find it, always lower than they 
 thought it : the fact being, that it is in- 
 finite, and capable of infinite height 
 and infinite fall ; but the nature of it — 
 and here is the faith which I would 
 have you hold with me — the nature 
 
318 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 of it is in the nobleness, not in the 
 catastrophe. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 December 2d, 
 
 The spirit of God is around you, 
 in the air that you breathe, — His 
 glory in the light that you see ; and in 
 the fruitfulness of the earth, and the 
 joy of its creatures. He has written 
 for you, day by day. His revelation, 
 as He has granted you, day by day, 
 your daily bread. 
 
 — Deucalion. 
 
 December jd. 
 All measures of reformation are ef- 
 fective in exact proportion to their 
 timeliness : partial decay may be cut 
 away and cleansed ; incipient error 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 319 
 
 corrected : but there is a point at 
 which corruption can no more be 
 stayed, nor wandering recalled. It 
 has been the manner of modern phi- 
 lanthropy to remain passive until that 
 precise period, and to leave the sick 
 to perish, and the foolish to stray, 
 while it spent itself in frantic exertions 
 to raise the dead, and reform the dust. 
 
 — T/ie Qtieeu of the Air. 
 
 December 4th, 
 But God had no more pleasure in 
 such sacrifice in the time of Moses 
 than He has now ; He never accepted, 
 as a propitiation for sin, any sacrifice 
 but the single one in perspective : and 
 that we may not entertain any shadow 
 of doubt on this subject, the worth- 
 lessness of all other sacrifice than this 
 
320 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 is proclaimed at the very time when 
 typical sacrifice was most imperatively 
 demanded. God was a spirit, and 
 could be worshipped only in spirit 
 and in truth, as singly and exclusively 
 when every day brought its claim of 
 typical and material service or offer- 
 ing, as now when He asks for none 
 but that of the heart. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 
 
 December ^th. 
 Above all, get quit of the absurd 
 idea that Heaven will interfere to cor- 
 rect great errors, while allowing its 
 laws to take their course in punishing 
 small ones. If you prepare a dish of 
 food carelessly, you do not expect 
 Providence to make it palatable ; nei- 
 ther if, through years of folly, you 
 
FROM JOHN RVSKIN 321 
 
 misguide your own life, need you 
 expect Divine interference to bring 
 round everything at last for the best. 
 I tell you, positively, the world is not 
 so constituted : the consequences of 
 great mistakes are just as sure as those 
 of small ones, and the happiness of 
 your whole life, and of all the lives 
 over which you have power, depends 
 as literally on your own commo» 
 sense and discretion as the excellence 
 and order of the feast of a day. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 December 6th, 
 You have had false prophets among 
 you — for centuries you have had 
 them — solemnly warned against them 
 though you were ; false prophets, who 
 have told you that all men are nothing 
 
322 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 but fiends or wolves, half beast, half 
 devil. Believe that, and indeed you 
 may sink to that. But refuse that, 
 and have faith that God " made you 
 upright," though jy^/^ have sought out 
 many inventions ; so, you will strive 
 daily to become more what your 
 Maker meant and means you to be, 
 and daily gives you also the power to 
 be — and you will cling more and more 
 to the nobleness and virtue that is in 
 you, saying, " My righteousness I 
 hold fast, and will not let it go.** 
 
 — The Crotvn of Wild Olive. 
 
 December '/th. 
 
 It does not much matter that an 
 
 individual loses two or three hundred 
 
 pounds in buying a bad picture, but 
 
 it is to be regretted that a nation 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 323 
 
 should lose two or three hundred 
 thousand in raising a ridiculous 
 building. 
 
 — Stones of Venice, 
 
 December 8th. 
 Since for every idle person some 
 one else must be working somewhere 
 to provide him with clothes and food, 
 and doing, therefore, double the quan- 
 tity of work that would be enough 
 for his own needs, it is only a mat- 
 ter of pure justice to compel the idle 
 person to work for his maintenance 
 himself. 
 
 — The Queen of the Air, 
 
 December gth. 
 We are continually assuming that 
 nations become strong according to 
 
324 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 their numbers. They indeed become 
 so, if those numbers can be made of 
 one mind ; but how are you sure you 
 can stay them in one mind, and keep 
 them from having north and south 
 minds ? Grant them unanimous, 
 how know you they will be unani- 
 mous in right ? If they are unani- 
 mous in wrong, the more they are, 
 essentially the weaker they are. Or, 
 suppose that they can neither be of one 
 mind, nor of two minds, but can only 
 be of no mind ? Suppose they are a 
 mere helpless mob ; tottering into 
 precipitant catastrophe, like a wagon- 
 load of stones when the wheel comes 
 off. Dangerous enough for their 
 neighbors, certainly, but not " pow- 
 erful." 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 325 
 
 December loth, 
 " Very probably," replied the 
 dwarf; "but," and his countenance 
 grew stern as he spoke, " the water 
 which has been refused to the cry 
 of the weary and dying, is unholy, 
 though it had been blessed by every 
 saint in heaven ; and the water which 
 is found in the vessel of mercy is 
 holy, though it had been defiled with 
 corpses." 
 
 — The King of the Golden River, 
 
 December nth. 
 All true science begins in the love, 
 not the dissection, of your fellow- 
 creatures ; and it ends in the love, 
 not the analysis, of God. 
 
 — Deucalion. 
 
326 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 December 12th. 
 Perfect taste is the faculty of re- 
 ceiving the greatest possible pleasure 
 from those material sources which are 
 attractive to our moral nature in its 
 purity and perfection ; but why we 
 receive pleasure from some forms 
 and colors, and not from others, is 
 no more to be asked or answered 
 than why we like sugar and dislike 
 wormwood. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 'December ijth. 
 Yet, if any one, skilled in reading 
 the torn manuscripts of the human 
 soul, cares for more intimate knowl- 
 edge of me, he may have it by know- 
 ing with what persons in past history 
 I have most sympathy. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 327 
 
 I will name three. 
 
 In all that is strongest and deepest 
 in me, — that fits me for my work, 
 and gives light or shadow to my be- 
 ing, I have sympathy with Guido 
 Guinicelli. 
 
 In my constant natural temper, 
 and thoughts of things and of peo- 
 ple, with Marmontel. 
 
 In my enforced and accidental tem- 
 per, and thoughts of things and of 
 people, with Dean Swift. 
 
 Any one who can understand the 
 natures of those three men, can un- 
 derstand mine : and having said so 
 much ; I am content to leave both 
 life and work to be remembered or 
 forgotten, as their uses may deserve. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
328 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 December 14th, 
 There are different kinds of slaves 
 and different masters. Some slaves 
 are scourged to their work by whips, 
 others are scourged to it by restless- 
 ness or ambition. It does not mat- 
 ter what the whip is ; it is none the 
 less a whip, because you have cut 
 thongs for it out of your own souls : 
 the fact, so far, of slavery, is in being 
 driven to your work without thought, 
 at another's bidding. Again, some 
 slaves are bought with money, and 
 others with praise. It matters not 
 what the purchase-money is. The 
 distinguishing sign of slavery is to 
 have a price, and be bought for it. 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 329 
 
 December i^th. 
 And as Gluck gazed, fresh grass 
 sprang beside the new streams, and 
 creeping plants grew and climbed 
 among the moistening soil. Young 
 flowers opened suddenly along the 
 riversides, as stars leap out when 
 twilight is deepening, and thickets 
 of myrtle, and tendrils of vine, cast 
 lengthening shadows over the valley 
 as they grew. And thus the Treasure 
 Valley became a garden again, and 
 the inheritance, which had been lost 
 by cruelty, was regained by love. 
 
 — The King of the Golden River. 
 
 December i6th. 
 It would be difficult to overrate 
 the value of the lessons which might 
 be derived from a faithful study of 
 
330 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 the history of this strange and mighty 
 city : a history which, in spite of the 
 labor of countless chroniclers, remains 
 in vague and disputable outline, — 
 barred with brightness and shade, 
 like the far away edge of her own 
 ocean, where the surf and the sand- 
 bank are mingled with the sky. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 'December lyth. 
 A great Idealist never can be ego- 
 tistic. The whole of his power de- 
 pends upon his losing sight and 
 feeling of his own existence, and be- 
 coming a mere witness and mirror of 
 truth, and a scribe of visions, — al- 
 ways passive in sight, passive in ut- 
 terance, lamenting continually that 
 he cannot completely reflect nor 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 331 
 
 clearly utter all he has seen, — not 
 by any means a proud state for a 
 man to be in. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 December i8th. 
 The best women are indeed neces- 
 sarily the most difficult to know ; they 
 are recognized chiefly in the happi- 
 ness of their husband and the noble- 
 ness of their children ; they are only 
 to be divined, not discerned, by the 
 stranger ; and, sometimes, seem al- 
 most helpless except in their homes ; 
 yet without the help of one of them, 
 to whom this book is dedicated, the 
 day would probably have come be- 
 fore now, when I should have written 
 and thought no more. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
332 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 December igth. 
 When a man has done his work, 
 and nothing can any way be mate- 
 rially altered in his fate, let him for- 
 get his toil, and jest with his fate, if 
 he will ; but what excuse can you 
 find for wilfulness of thought, at the 
 very time when every crisis of future 
 fortune hangs on your decisions ? A 
 youth thoughtless ! when all the hap- 
 piness of his home forever depends 
 on the chances, or the passions, of 
 an hour ! A youth thoughtless ! 
 when the career of all his days de- 
 pends on the opportunity of a mo- 
 ment ! A youth thoughtless ! when 
 his every act is as a torch to the laid 
 train of future conduct, and every 
 imagination a fountain of life or 
 death ! Be thoughtless in any after 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 333 
 
 years, rather than now — though, in- 
 deed, there is only one place where a 
 man may be nobly thoughtless, — his 
 deathbed. No thinking should ever 
 be left to be done there. 
 
 — TAe Cro%v7i of Wild Olive. 
 
 December 20th. 
 So far as education does indeed 
 tend to make the senses delicate, 
 and the perceptions accurate, and 
 thus enables people to be pleased 
 with quiet instead of gaudy color, 
 and with graceful instead of coarse 
 form ; and by long acquaintance with 
 the best things, to discern quickly 
 what is fine form from what is com- 
 mon — so far acquired taste is an hon- 
 orable faculty, and it is true praise of 
 anything to say it is " in good taste/' 
 
 — Frondes Ag7-estes. 
 
334 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 December 2ist. 
 In these, then (and of course in all 
 minor ways besides, that you can dis- 
 cover in your own household), you 
 must be to the best of your strength 
 usefully employed during the greater 
 part of the day, so that you may be 
 able at the end of it to say, as proudly 
 as any peasant, that you have not 
 eaten the bread of idleness. 
 
 — Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 December 2 2d, 
 Exactly in the degree in which you 
 can find creatures greater than your- 
 self, to look up to, in that degree, you 
 are ennobled yourself, and, in that de- 
 gree, happy. If you could live al- 
 ways in the presence of archangels, 
 you would be happier than in that of 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 335 
 
 men ; but even if only in the com- 
 pany of admirable knights and beau- 
 tiful ladies, the more noble and bright 
 they were, and the more you could 
 reverence their virtue, the happier 
 you would be. On the contrary, if 
 you were condemned to live among 
 a multitude of idiots, dumb, dis- 
 torted, and malicious, you would 
 not be happy in the constant sense 
 of your own superiority. Thus all 
 real joy and power of progress in 
 humanity depend on finding some- 
 thing to reverence, and all the base- 
 ness and misery of humanity begin 
 in a habit of disdain. 
 
 — T/ie Crcrwn of Wild Olive. 
 
 December 2jd. 
 And Gluck went, and dwelt in the 
 valley, and the poor were never driven 
 
336 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 from his door : so that his barns be- 
 came full of corn, and his house of 
 treasure. And, for him, the river 
 had, according to the dwarf's prom- 
 ise, become a River of Gold. 
 
 And, to this day, the inhabitants 
 of the valley point out the place 
 where the three drops of holy dew 
 were cast into the stream, and trace 
 the course of the Golden River un- 
 der the ground, until it emerges in 
 the Treasure Valley. 
 
 — The King of the Golden River, 
 
 December 24th, 
 If, two thousand years ago, we had 
 been permitted to watch the slow set- 
 tling of the slime of those turbid 
 rivers into the polluted sea, and the 
 
FROM JOHN RUSK IN 337 
 
 gaining upon its deep and fresh waters 
 of the HfelesSj impassable, unvoyage- 
 able plain, how little could we have 
 understood the purpose with which 
 those islands were shaped out of the 
 void, and the torpid waters enclosed 
 with their desolate walls of sand ! 
 How httle could we have known, 
 any more than of what now seems to 
 us most distressful, dark, and object- 
 less, the glorious aim which was then 
 in the mind of Him in whose hand 
 are all the corners of the earth ! how 
 little imagined that in the laws which 
 were stretching forth the gloomy mar- 
 gins of those fruitless banks, and feed- 
 ing the bitter grass among their 
 shallows, there was indeed a prepara- 
 tion, and the only preparation possible^ 
 for the founding of a city which was 
 
338 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 to be set like a golden clasp on the 
 girdle of the earth, to write her his- 
 tory on the white scrolls of the sea- 
 surges, and to word it in their thunder, 
 and to gather and give forth, in 
 world-wide pulsation, the glory of the 
 West and of the East, from the burn- 
 ing heart of her Fortitude and Splen- 
 dor. 
 
 — Stones of Venice. 
 
 'December 2^th, 
 The temper by which right taste is 
 formed is characteristically patient. 
 It dwells upon what is submitted to 
 it. It does not trample upon it, — 
 lest it should be pearls, even though 
 it look like husks. 
 
 — Frondes Agrestes, 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 339 
 
 December 26th, 
 The strength is in the men, and in 
 their unity and virtue, not in their 
 standing room : a Httle group of wise 
 hearts is better than a wilderness full 
 of fools ; and only that nation gains 
 true territory, which gains itself 
 
 — The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 December 2yth, 
 Do not talk but of what you know ; 
 do not think but of what you have 
 materials to think justly upon ; and 
 do not look for things only that you 
 like, when there are others to be seen. 
 
 — Time and Tide. 
 
 December 28th, 
 We are not sent into this world 
 to do anything into which we cannot 
 put our hearts. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
340 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 December 2gth. 
 Yet, when he had climbed for an- 
 other hour, his thirst became intolera- 
 ble again ; and, when he looked at his 
 bottle, he saw that there were only 
 five or six drops left in it, and he 
 could not venture to drink. And, as 
 he was hanging the flask to his belt 
 again, he saw a little dog lying on the 
 rocks, gasping for breath — just as 
 Hans had seen it on the day of his 
 ascent. And Gluck stopped and 
 looked at it, and then at the Golden 
 River, not five hundred yards above 
 him ; and he thought of the dwarf's 
 words, " that no one could succeed, 
 except in his first attempt "; and he 
 tried to pass the dog, but it whined 
 piteously, and Gluck stopped again. 
 " Poor beastie," said Gluck, " it'll be 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 341 
 
 dead before I come down again, if I 
 don't help it." Then he looked 
 closer and closer at it, and its eye 
 turned on him so mournfully, that he 
 could not stand it. " Confound the 
 King and his gold too," said Gluck; 
 and he opened the flask, and poured 
 all the water into the dog's mouth. 
 
 — King of the Golden River. 
 
 December joth, 
 I hear strange talk continually, 
 " how difficult it is to make people 
 pay for being educated ! " Why, I 
 should think so ! Do you make your 
 children pay for their education, or 
 do you give it them compulsorily, and 
 gratis ? You do not expect them to 
 pay you for their teaching, except by 
 becoming good children. Why should 
 
342 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 you expect a peasant to pay for his, 
 except by becoming a good man ? — 
 payment enough, I think, if we knew 
 it. Payment enough to himself, as 
 to us. For that is another of our 
 grand popular mistakes — people are 
 always thinking of education as a 
 means of livelihood. Education is 
 not a profitable business, but a costly 
 one ; nay, even the best attainments 
 of it are always unprofitable, in any 
 terms of coin. No nation ever made 
 its bread either by its great arts, or 
 its great wisdoms. By its minor arts 
 or manufactures, by its practical 
 knowledges, yes : but its noble schol- 
 arship, its noble philosophy, and its 
 noble art, are always to be bought as 
 a treasure, not sold for a livelihood. 
 
 c^The Crown of Wild Olive, 
 
FROM JOHN RUSKIN 343 
 
 December jist. 
 And so I wish you all good speed, 
 and the favor of Hercules and of the 
 Muses ; and to those who shall best 
 deserve them, the crown of Parsley 
 first and then of the Laurel. 
 
 — The Queen of the Air. 
 
; 
 
 f-ii^ 
 
Deacidified using the Bookkeeper procej 
 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Date: May 2009 
 
 PreservatlonTechnologie; 
 
 A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATIC 
 
 111 Thomson Park Drive 
 Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
 (724) 779-2111