John Ruskin

In Gordon B. Hinckley — Go Forward With Faith, John Ruskin is cited for a single quotation on the value of work: “The greatest reward is not what we receive for our labor, but what we become by it.” The line sits among the book’s gathering of writers and thinkers — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Browning, Charlie Munger — whom Hinckley (or biographer Sheri L. Dew) draws on to frame a life of diligent effort and self-improvement.

Context: John Ruskin (1819–1900) was an influential English art critic, social thinker, and writer of the Victorian era, known for works such as Modern Painters and Unto This Last and for tying aesthetics to morality and the dignity of labor.

Where this appears

• Gordon B. Hinckley — Go Forward With Faith — quoted on work (“not what we receive for our labor, but what we become by it”)