Success

I've been reading Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, and I loved this bit about success:

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It may be remarked in passing that success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblances to merit. To the crowd, success wears almost the features of true mastery, and the greatest dupe of this counterfeit is History. Juvenal and Tacitus alone mistrust it. In these days of almost official philosophy has come to dwell in the house of Success, wear its livery, receive callers in its ante-chamber. Success in principle and for its own sake. Prosperity presupposes ability. Win a lottery-prize and you are a clever man. Winners are adulated. To be born with a caul is everything; luck is what matters. Be fortunate and you will be thought great. With a handful of exceptions which constitute the glory of a century, the popular esteem is singularly short-sighted. Gilt is as good as gold. No harm in being a chance arrival provided you arrive. The populace is an aged Narcissus which worships itself and applauds the commonplace. The tremendous qualities of a Moses, an Aeschylus, a Dante, a Michelangelo or a Napoleon are readily ascribed by the multitudes to any man, in any sphere, who has got what he set out t get - the notary who becomes a deputy, the hack playwright who produces a mock-Corneille, the eunuch who acquires a harem, the journeyman-general who by accident wins the decisive battle of an epoch. The profiteer who supplies the army of the Sambre-et-Meuse with boot-soles of cardboard and earns himself an income of four hundred thousand a year; the huckster who espouses usery and brings her to bed of seven or eight millions; the preacher who becomes a bishop by loudly braying; the bailiff of a great estate who so enriches himself that on retirement he is made Minister of Finance - all this is what men call genius, just as they call a painted face beauty and a richly attired majesty. They confound the brilliance of the firmament with the star-shaped footprints of the duck in the mud.

Les Miserables, Book One: An Upright Man (Page 64)

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