— Meditations, Book 8 (tr. George Long, 1862)
About this quote
हिन्दी में
प्रशंसा करने वाला भी अल्पजीवी है और जिसकी प्रशंसा हो रही है वह भी; याद करने वाला भी और जो याद किया जा रहा है वह भी। और यह सब इस दुनिया के एक हिस्से के एक कोने में हो रहा है; और यहाँ भी सब एकमत नहीं — कोई तो अपने आप से भी एकमत नहीं रहता; और यह पूरी पृथ्वी भी एक बिंदु भर है।
What it means
The passage works like a multiplication in which every factor turns out to be small: how long the praiser lasts, how long the praised lasts, how much ground the audience covers, how much of that audience agrees. The sharpest clause is the last one about agreement — not any one with himself. The person whose good opinion you are working for will not reliably hold that opinion, which undercuts fame from the inside rather than from the scale of the cosmos.
It is easy to read this as a shrug at effort in general, and it is worth being exact: what is being priced at nearly nothing is praise and being remembered, not the work. The deflation is aimed at one specific motive, and it leaves every reason for doing the thing well untouched.
What it teaches you
When you catch yourself shaping a decision around what one particular person will think, ask whether that person will still think it in a year — people revise, forget, and contradict themselves, and you are steering by a reading that will move. Then check what the praise was supposed to certify, and aim at that instead, since it is the part that stays put.
अर्थ और सीख
मार्कस प्रशंसा के हर हिस्से को नापते हैं: तारीफ़ करने वाला और तारीफ़ पाने वाला दोनों थोड़े दिन के हैं, सुननेवाले दुनिया के एक कोने में हैं, और वहाँ भी सब सहमत नहीं — आदमी अपनी ही राय पर टिका नहीं रहता। इससे नाम और यश की कीमत लगभग शून्य रह जाती है, पर काम की कीमत कम नहीं होती। सीख यह है कि किसी की राय के हिसाब से फ़ैसले न करें, क्योंकि वह राय भी बदल जाएगी; उस चीज़ पर ध्यान दें जिसके लिए तारीफ़ मिलनी थी।
Where it comes from
A deflation of reputation carried out by shrinking every term in it: the one who praises and the one praised both die, the audience occupies one corner of one small planet, opinion is not even unanimous there, and people do not hold steady opinions with themselves. What is left of fame once each factor is measured honestly is close to nothing.
The passage appears in Book 8 of the Meditations, in the 1862 translation by George Long. The phrasing is Long’s nineteenth-century English.
