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Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws, Makes that and th’ action fine.
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“Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws, Makes that and th’ action fine.”

George Herbert

Source
The Elixir
Date
1633
Meaning

Meaning of “Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,…”

Herbert’s devotional speaker argues that ordinary work can acquire spiritual value when it is performed conscientiously for a religious purpose rather than for status.

Source context

Where does it come from?

“The Elixir,” in The Temple, published in 1633. The stanza is explicitly Christian devotional poetry about motive, work and service; it should not be flattened into secular evidence about job performance.

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Ideas connected with this quotation

EffortHelping OthersPurpose Quotes About Direction, Duty & Meaningful WorkServiceShortGood DeedsProfessionalismReligion
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requires earnest purpose, honest self-devotion, and hard work.
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“requires earnest purpose, honest self-devotion, and hard work.”

Samuel Smiles · Thrift · 1875
Meaning & context

Smiles argues that social reform requires committed people and sustained effort rather than money alone, joining honesty, purpose and work in one historical reform ethic.

Source details

Thrift, Chapter XIV, “Riches and Charity,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Smiles argues that money alone cannot reform conduct and says change from intemperance, improvidence and irreligion requires earnest purpose, self-devotion and hard work; that nineteenth-century reform context is preserved.

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No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.
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“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.”

Charles Dickens · Our Mutual Friend · 1865
Meaning & context

Usefulness is defined through reducing another person’s burden, making service a direct measure of value.

Source details

Our Mutual Friend, Book III, Chapter IX (“Somebody Becomes the Subject of a Prediction”), verified against Project Gutenberg #883 and the stable Wikisource chapter transcription. John Rokesmith (the Secretary) answers Bella Wilfer after she calls herself “useless enough in this world.” This older catalog row modernizes Dickens’s represented wording “who lightens the burden of it for any one else” to “who lightens the burden of it to anyone else”; the frozen quotation remains unchanged and is explicitly treated as a wording variant of the same passage. This is fictional character dialogue about practical usefulness, not an empirical or clinical definition of human worth.

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though the ways in which I can make myself useful are few, yet the work open to me is endless.
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“though the ways in which I can make myself useful are few, yet the work open to me is endless.”

Helen Keller · Optimism: An Essay · 1903
Meaning & context

Keller separates the number of available ways to contribute from the amount of meaningful work still possible within those ways.

Source details

Optimism: An Essay (1903), Project Gutenberg #31622. The statement is autobiographical and tied to Keller’s own assessment of disability and useful work.

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The memory of a good deed lives.
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“The memory of a good deed lives.”

Aesop · Aesop’s Fables — The Old Woman and the Wine-Jar · Townsend translation
Meaning & context

A worthwhile action can leave a durable impression after the action itself has passed, much as fragrance remains in an emptied vessel.

Source details

Moral printed after “The Old Woman and the Wine-Jar” in the Townsend translation.

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The motor power of his life is love.
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“The motor power of his life is love.”

Leo Tolstoy · The Kingdom of God Is Within You · 1894
Meaning & context

Within Tolstoy’s three-part account of life, the divine conception is motivated by love rather than personal enjoyment or social glory.

Source details

The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Chapter IV; Constance Garnett translation, Project Gutenberg #43302. In Tolstoy’s threefold account of animal, social and divine conceptions of life, the divine conception is governed by love and directed toward God rather than personal enjoyment or social glory.

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their work is first, their fee second
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“their work is first, their fee second”

John Ruskin · The Crown of Wild Olive · 1866
Meaning & context

Ruskin contrasts service to the work itself with making payment the sole governing motive, arguing that competent professions retain a purpose beyond the fee.

Source details

The Crown of Wild Olive, lecture on Work; Project Gutenberg #26716. The passage belongs to Ruskin’s Victorian moral and religious argument about labor and professional motives, not to a modern compensation model.