Quão doce é o louvor e a justa glória
Dos próprios feitos, quando são soados!
Qualquer nobre trabalha que em memória
Vença ou iguale os grandes já passados.
As invejas da ilustre e alheia história
Fazem mil vezes feitos sublimados.
Quem valerosas obras exercita,
Louvor alheio muito o esperta e incita.
Stanza 92 (tr. Richard Fanshawe)
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto V
“I am sensible how much nobler it is to place the reward of virtue in the silent approbation of one's own breast than in the applause of the world. Glory ought to be the consequence, not the motive of our actions.”
Meminimus quanto maiore animo honestatis fructus in conscientia quam in fama reponatur. Sequi enim gloria, non appeti debet.
Pliny the Younger (61–113) Roman writer
Letter 8, 14.
Letters, Book I
“To all this, his illustrious mind reflects the noblest ornament; he places no part of his happiness in ostentation, but refers the whole of it to conscience; and seeks the reward of a virtuous action, not in the applauses of the world, but in the action itself.”
Ornat haec magnitudo animi, quae nihil ad ostentationem, omnia ad conscientiam refert recteque facti non ex populi sermone mercedem, sed ex facto petit.
Pliny the Younger (61–113) Roman writer
Letter 22, 5.
Letters, Book I
Jay Leno (1950) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, voice actor and television host
more applause
Monologue, 6 October, 2008
The Tonight Show
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer
Introduction to the story “Vaster Than Empires and More Slow” p. 166
Short fiction, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975)
John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar
Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book X, p. 367
Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters
Accord de différentes loix de la nature qui avoient jusqu’ici paru incompatibles (1744)
“One man, by delaying, restored the state to us.
He valued safety more than mob's applause;
Hence now his glory more resplendent grows.”
Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem.
Noenum rumores ponebat ante salutem;
Ergo plusque magisque viri nunc gloria claret.
Ennius (-239–-169 BC) Roman writer
Of Fabius Maximus Cunctator, as quoted by Cicero in De Senectute, Chapter IV (Loeb translation)
“No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.”
William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist
Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 15
