Haste and pressure of business make division of labour necessary among ourselves, and each man must cultivate a specialty; so that if a man should appear who was well qualified for all posts, we should not believe in him; and more than that, we should not find him out. So soon as he showed excellence in one matter, he would be ticketed with that and tied down to it: any attempts in any other subject would be regarded as graceful by-works, but not as likely to lead to high success. Now in Athens there was not so much pressure, there was not so much tyranny of public opinion, and the state was smaller.
This passage gives me the sense that the work that we are good at but not necessarily passionate about are more valued in our society. Reminds me of the phrase, "If you love your job you never have to work a day in your life" Sometimes the work that we don`t like doing is some of our finest work and yet what we love to do may not be up to standard for some.