A Brick in the Valley

“From time to time, little men will come along to find fault with what you have done; to say that something could have been done better; that there has been some mistake, some shortcoming; that things are not really managed in the best of all possible manners, in the best of all possible worlds.   They will have their say and they will go downstream like bubbles; they will vanish; but the work you have done will remain for the ages.  It is the man who does the job who counts, not the little scolding critic who thinks how it ought to have been done.”

Teddy Roosevelt, to the builders of the Panama Canal. 

“Most pastoral work involves routines similar to cleaning out the barn, mucking out the stalls, spreading manure, pulling weeds.  This is not, any of it, bad work in itself, but if we expected to ride a glistening black stallioni in dialy parades and then return to the barn where a lackey grooms our steed for us, we will be severely disappointed and end up horribly resentful.”  Eugene Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant, page 16.