One of my favorite quotes is from John Ruskin: “The highest reward for a man’s toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.” Seems Ruskin is talking about growth, and beauty, and progress in an artisan’s understanding of art. How that is at least as valuable to the artisan as any monetary reimbursement or notoriety he might gain from his product. Money and admiration and fame and all that stuff comes and goes, but the growth that happens in a man’s soul when he pushes his inner boundaries, when he creates art, can not ever be lost.
