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About this quote

What does it mean?
Labour, joy, and sorrow must coexist; isolating any one makes life base.
In plain terms
Work needs emotion, and emotion needs work, to be meaningful.
What can you take from it?
Seek balance between effort and feeling.

Where it applies

  • career
  • art
  • daily life

Putting it to work

  • find joy in effort
  • accept sorrow in work

Questions to consider

  • Is your work empty of feeling?
  • Do you avoid work to avoid sorrow?

Another view

Sometimes rest without work is necessary for health.

More from John Ruskin

  1. For when we are interested in the beauty of a thing, the oftener we can see it the better; but when we are interested only by the story of a thing, we get tire…

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  2. Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in …

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  3. What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.

    Permalink to quote #9

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