Aphorism #81 : Renew your Brilliance

in #philosophy7 years ago


"Tis the privilege of the Phenix. Ability is wont to grow old, and with it fame. The staleness of custom weakens admiration, and a mediocrity that's new often eclipses the highest excellence grown old. Try therefore to be born again in valour, in genius, in fortune, in all. Display startling novelties, rise afresh like the sun every day. Change too the scene on which you shine, so that your loss may be felt in the old scenes of your triumph, while the novelty of your powers wins you applause in the new." - Balthasar Gracian's "The Art of Worldly Wisdom"


Reputations sail by the winds of action. Each night the world of words and deeds dies. At daybreak men wake, live again, their reputations reborn and waiting to be remade. Like men who depart this life, the men of yesterday belong to world of yesterday; they are soon forgotten. Therefore, treat each day as a new life, one link in the chain of an infinite lifetime. Renew yourself, and eternally return to live again in this life and the next, in today's world and tomorrow's. Even the light of the stars is never steady but pulses again and again their brilliance.