Make the workmanship surpass the materials.

The maxim urges that artistry and skill should elevate even ordinary or limited resources: what matters most is not the inherent value of the “materials” but the maker’s ingenuity, technique, and taste. Read as advice to poets and craftsmen alike, it aligns with a classical aesthetic ideal in which form, arrangement, and execution can confer worth beyond raw substance. In a broader ethical sense, it can be taken as counsel to let disciplined effort and craft outshine one’s circumstances—turning constraints into an occasion for excellence rather than an excuse for mediocrity.