After the death of William Rogers Richards, in 1910, a volume of extracts from his sermons was compiled by Abraham Van Doren Honeyman, with the assistance of Mrs. Richards, titled The Truth in Love: From the Sermons of William R. Richards (1912). It is a daily devotional that spans a whole year.
The devotional reading for today (April 27) includes a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson.
That which costs is also that which well repays the cost. So it is doubtless true, as a distinguished writer of our day has said, that 'the old masters painted for joy and knew not that joy had gone out of them;' while, on the other hand, the first great master of Christian song also said truly of his greatest poem, that it had 'made him lean for many years' [Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Canto XXV].
The Christian rule for us all in our daily occupation is to do every piece of work not merely so that it will look well done, but so that it will be well done. For we are God's servants, and God sees things, not as they seem to be, but as they are.