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every good piece of art, to whichever of these ends it may be directed, involves first essentially the evidence of human skill and the formation of an actually beautiful thing by it.
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“every good piece of art, to whichever of these ends it may be directed, involves first essentially the evidence of human skill and the formation of an actually beautiful thing by it.”

John Ruskin

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Source
Lectures on Art, Delivered Before the University of Oxford in Hilary Term, 1870
Date
1870
Meaning

Meaning of “every good piece of art, to whichever of…”

Ruskin makes skilled human making and achieved beauty basic components of good art, foregrounding workmanship before his additional demands for truth or usefulness.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Lectures on Art, Lecture IV, Project Gutenberg #19164. The sentence belongs to Ruskin’s own theory of artistic quality.

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ArtBeautifulCreativityDiscipline Quotes About Habits, Practice & ConsistencyEffortHard WorkInspirational Quotes About Hope, Courage & PossibilityMotivational Quotes for Action, Effort & PersistenceProductivitySuccessMotivation For WorkWork Ethic
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All that is great in man comes of labour;—greatness in art, in literature, in science.
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“All that is great in man comes of labour;—greatness in art, in literature, in science.”

Samuel Smiles · Thrift · 1875
Meaning & context

Smiles presents major artistic, literary and scientific achievement as inseparable from labour, reflecting the book’s strong Victorian ethic of industry.

Source details

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.

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Labour and skill applied to the vulgarest things invest them at once with precious value.
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“Labour and skill applied to the vulgarest things invest them at once with precious value.”

Samuel Smiles · Thrift · 1875
Meaning & context

Skill can transform ordinary material through workmanship, connecting value not only with the object itself but with knowledgeable effort applied to it.

Source details

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Smiles moves from mutual dependence among workers to the value added by labour and skill; “vulgarest” preserves the period wording for common or ordinary things.

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Genius is but a capability of labouring intensely: it is the power of making great and sustained efforts.
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“Genius is but a capability of labouring intensely: it is the power of making great and sustained efforts.”

Samuel Smiles · Thrift · 1875
Meaning & context

Genius is redefined as capacity for sustained effort, emphasizing endurance and application over an image of effortless inspiration.

Source details

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Immediately after linking greatness in art, literature and science with labour, Smiles rhetorically defines genius as a capacity for intense and sustained effort; it is not treated as a modern psychological finding.

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The master-word is Work
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“The master-word is Work”

William Osler · The Master-Word in Medicine · 1903
Meaning & context

Osler makes sustained work the organizing principle of his address to medical students, emphasizing disciplined practice over brilliance without application.

Source details

The Master-Word in Medicine, address delivered October 1, 1903 at the opening of the new buildings of the University of Toronto Medical Faculty; reviewed against the represented 1903 John Murphy pamphlet, Internet Archive identifier b28060805. ‘The master-word is Work’ is Osler’s organizing refrain and is followed by his appeal to write the word on the heart and forehead. This remains historical professional rhetoric rather than an endorsement of unsafe working hours or workaholism.

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America is the Land of Labour
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“America is the Land of Labour”

Benjamin Franklin · Information to Those Who Would Remove to America · 1784
Meaning & context

Franklin rejects European fantasies of effortless prosperity in eighteenth-century North America, emphasizing that newcomers should expect productive labor rather than automatic wealth or patronage.

Source details

Information to Those Who Would Remove to America, before March 1784; Founders Online. This is historical emigration advice written for Europeans and is not a claim about present-day U.S. labor or immigration conditions.

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