"By the work one knows the workman"
About this Quote
A job isn’t an alibi; it’s a fingerprint. La Fontaine’s line lands with the clean finality of a proverb, but it’s really a warning shot aimed at reputation management centuries before PR existed. “By the work one knows the workman” insists that character is not a private, inner museum piece. It’s something the world is entitled to infer from what you make, build, write, or neglect. The sentence turns craft into evidence.
La Fontaine, a poet best known for fables where animals perform human hypocrisies in miniature, understood how people hide behind manners, titles, and explanations. This maxim strips those coverings away. It’s not about moral purity; it’s about the observable trail. If your work is sloppy, cruel, evasive, or self-serving, the quote suggests we don’t need to psychoanalyze you. The artifact tells on the maker. That’s the subtext: accountability without courtroom drama.
In 17th-century France, where patronage shaped artistic survival and social standing could be theater, the line also reads as a pragmatic instruction. You can’t talk your way into lasting esteem; you have to produce something that holds up. It’s a quietly democratic idea in an age of hierarchy: the output, not the pedigree, is the measure.
The phrase endures because it flatters no one. It’s both compliment and indictment, depending on what you’ve actually done.
La Fontaine, a poet best known for fables where animals perform human hypocrisies in miniature, understood how people hide behind manners, titles, and explanations. This maxim strips those coverings away. It’s not about moral purity; it’s about the observable trail. If your work is sloppy, cruel, evasive, or self-serving, the quote suggests we don’t need to psychoanalyze you. The artifact tells on the maker. That’s the subtext: accountability without courtroom drama.
In 17th-century France, where patronage shaped artistic survival and social standing could be theater, the line also reads as a pragmatic instruction. You can’t talk your way into lasting esteem; you have to produce something that holds up. It’s a quietly democratic idea in an age of hierarchy: the output, not the pedigree, is the measure.
The phrase endures because it flatters no one. It’s both compliment and indictment, depending on what you’ve actually done.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work Ethic |
|---|---|
| Source | Rejected source: Fables of La Fontaine — a New Edition, with Notes (La Fontaine, Jean de, 1695)EBook #7241
Evidence: d by the reviser some account of the translator who is still one of the living n Other candidates (2) Jean de La Fontaine (Jean de La Fontaine) compilation95.0% 1668 fable 16 a loeuvre on connaît lartisan by the work one knows the workman b To All The World Must Die (Paul Hemenway Altrocchi, MD, 2014) compilation95.0% ... Jean de la Fontaine declared : “ By the work one knows the workman . " And Anatole France : " The artist either c... |
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