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Source identified
“Work first—you are God’s servants;”

John Ruskin

Source
The Crown of Wild Olive
Date
1866
Attribution
Source identified
Meaning

What does this quote mean?

Ruskin’s deliberately theological formulation places meaningful work ahead of payment and interprets that priority as religious service.

Source context

Where does it come from?

The Crown of Wild Olive, lecture on Work; Project Gutenberg #26716. This is explicitly Christian moral rhetoric in Ruskin’s text and is not secularized into a universal economic proposition.

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Attribution

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