zlacker

Exactly.

I read a book, where one of the characters is a smith. It has this exchange, between him, and another character:

    "Always do the very best job you can," he said on another occasion as he put a last few finishing touches with a file on the metal parts of a wagon tongue he was repairing.
    "But that piece goes underneath," Garion said. "No one will ever see it."
    "But I know it's there," Durnik said, still smoothing the metal. "If it isn't done as well as I can do it, I'll be ashamed every time I see this wagon go by -and I'll see the wagon every day.”

>>ChrisM+(OP)
One reason I like this kind of work is that it implies when someone spent that much effort on an irrelevant detail they probably paid attention to important parts as well. Not always the case but yeah.

>>ChrisM+(OP)
I, too, am a firm subscriber to the Goodman Durnik school of development. With an occasional bring-a-flaming-sword-into-a-meeting-room-to-emphasize-your-point twist.

>>moonch+l5
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

- [Probably erroneously] ascribed to Aristotle

But naysayers will say we are "bikeshedding."

Meh. Whatevs. I do things the way I do.

>>ChrisM+(OP)

  In the elder days of Art,
    Builders wrought with greatest care
  Each minute and unseen part;
    For the Gods see everywhere.

(from Longfellow, The Builders, 1850)

I’m not sure to which extent I agree with this piece’s medieval outlook of seeking and expecting perfection in the past, not in the future, but it doesn’t detract from the quality of this piece of writing. (Same for Tolkien, for example.) (And the poem actually talks about improving on the past, not venerating it; citing this part in isolation is a bit misleading.) (Now that I’m comparing these two quotes, the difference between “because the gods will see” and “because you’ll know it’s there” is... probably not worth overanalyzing, but at the same time intensely amusing.)

>>ChrisM+Ga
It’s a paraphrase, but the origin is indeed Aristotle.

http://www.universalethics.org/Ideas/Virtue_as_a_habit.htm