Life & Wisdom Quote by Ovid

Art doesn’t get a free pass just because it’s made of expensive stuff. Ovid’s line is a cool-headed rebuke to the lazy prestige economy: the gold isn’t the point, the craft is. “Make the workmanship surpass the materials” flips the usual hierarchy. Materials are inert; workmanship is will, intelligence, and taste. The verb “surpass” matters, too. It’s not “match” or “honor” the materials, but beat them, as if the artist’s job is to outwit the raw world by giving it form more impressive than its price tag.

That’s a pointed stance from a poet working in Augustan Rome, where surface and spectacle were political tools. Augustus sold a moral renovation of the state alongside literal renovations of the city. In that climate, Ovid’s emphasis on craftsmanship reads like a sly defense of artistry itself: what endures isn’t marble or bronze, but the shaping mind. It’s also a self-justifying credo for a writer whose medium is, on paper, cheap. Words cost almost nothing; the labor of arrangement is everything.

The subtext carries a faint provocation: if workmanship is what counts, elites can’t hide behind patronage, pedigree, or glitter. Taste becomes accountable. In a culture obsessed with display, Ovid makes a case for a subtler status marker: skill that can’t be bought wholesale, only earned line by line.