To follow true modesty. To no longer see failure as an injustice, and above all to find others’ success legitimate.
It is not a question of the soul’s grandeur, of resignation, of serene pride. It is a question of flushing out false sentiments that, previously, would deform the situation as a whole. This entire greedy restless world tumbles like stones down the slopes of glaciers. To each his place, his obscurity or his glory. It is a mass of swarming ambitions; but no one is a greater master of their destiny than any other. Those who go to so much trouble to live and float along fail to understand that solitude and selflessness are possible. And yet these become easy, and even pleasurable, when you realize that nothing is less enviable than the success that a difficult character always considers to be undeserved. There is more bitterness to accepting the idea of a glory greater than your talents than to that of an obscurity so great that it risks going unnoticed.
In order to draw nearer to true modesty, one must always prefer the risk of being above the lot that you have been granted rather than below.
Consequently, instead of seeking it one must flee success and prefer injustice, that which makes you value yourself too little to that which would make you value yourself too much.