Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“All that is great in man comes of labour;—greatness in art, in literature, in science.”
- Source
- Thrift
- Date
- 1875
Meaning of “All that is great in man comes of…”
Smiles presents major artistic, literary and scientific achievement as inseparable from labour, reflecting the book’s strong Victorian ethic of industry.
Where does it come from?
Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Smiles broadens his defence of labour from material production to art, literature, science and knowledge; the universal wording is his historical moral claim, not an empirical rule that effort alone guarantees greatness.
