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“work is only done well when it is done with a will”
Ruskin links quality with willing engagement: merely being compelled to perform a task is not, in his argument, enough to produce work done with judgment and commitment.
Source note: The Crown of Wild Olive, lecture on Work; Project Gutenberg #26716. The sentence occurs in a discussion of how hard work should be organized and chosen; its period labor assumptions remain contextualized.
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“My race will succeed in proportion as it learns to do a common thing in an uncommon manner.”
Distinctive success can come from doing ordinary work unusually well, emphasizing thoroughness and indispensable usefulness rather than status.
Source note: Up from Slavery, Chapter XVI, “Europe,” Project Gutenberg #2376. While discussing Henry O. Tanner and recognition for excellent work, Washington restates his Tuskegee principle that advancement depends on doing useful work so thoroughly that its value becomes difficult to ignore.
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“The master-word is Work”
Osler makes sustained work the organizing principle of his address to medical students, emphasizing disciplined practice over brilliance without application.
Source note: The Master-Word in Medicine, address at the opening of the University of Toronto medical faculty buildings, October 1, 1903. This collection treats the line as historical professional rhetoric and not as an endorsement of excessive working hours.
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“Well done is better than well said.”
Franklin gives execution priority over impressive promises or intentions.
Source note: Poor Richard’s Almanack.
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“Diligence is the mother of good luck.”
Persistent effort improves the odds of useful results because steady work creates more opportunities for progress than waiting for favorable circumstances.
Source note: Poor Richard’s Almanack; the maxim appears in Franklin’s collected Poor Richard material.
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“he must work and be industrious to live.”
Franklin tells prospective emigrants without inherited wealth that livelihood would depend on work and industry, directly countering expectations of effortless advancement after arrival.
Source note: Information to Those Who Would Remove to America, before March 1784; Founders Online. The lowercase opening is retained because this is a clause from Franklin’s longer sentence about strangers, law, liberty and industry.