"How quickly passes away the glory of this world"
About this Quote
A small sentence that lands like a trapdoor: whatever you are building, admiring, chasing, it is already vanishing. Thomas a Kempis is writing from inside late medieval Christian asceticism, where the point isn’t to dunk on beauty or achievement for sport, but to re-scale desire. “Glory” here isn’t abstract fame; it’s the whole apparatus of status and satisfaction that the world offers as proof you matter. The word “quickly” does the real work. It compresses a lifetime into a blink, turning triumph into a temporary fever you recover from.
The intent is disciplinary. A Kempis isn’t merely observing impermanence; he’s training attention away from public reward and toward interior steadiness. In the world he knew - a Europe jittery with plague, war, and unstable politics, and a Church preoccupied with reform and devotion - worldly permanence was already visibly unreliable. His famous devotional text, The Imitation of Christ, treats the self like a house that needs rearranging: fewer trophies in the front room, more silence, more humility, fewer mirrors.
The subtext is both consoling and threatening. Consoling, because if glory evaporates, so can humiliation; the market’s verdict on your life is not the final judge. Threatening, because it refuses to let success serve as moral alibi. You can’t bank meaning in applause. A Kempis offers a kind of spiritual anti-influencer ethic: build where time can’t repossess it.
The intent is disciplinary. A Kempis isn’t merely observing impermanence; he’s training attention away from public reward and toward interior steadiness. In the world he knew - a Europe jittery with plague, war, and unstable politics, and a Church preoccupied with reform and devotion - worldly permanence was already visibly unreliable. His famous devotional text, The Imitation of Christ, treats the self like a house that needs rearranging: fewer trophies in the front room, more silence, more humility, fewer mirrors.
The subtext is both consoling and threatening. Consoling, because if glory evaporates, so can humiliation; the market’s verdict on your life is not the final judge. Threatening, because it refuses to let success serve as moral alibi. You can’t bank meaning in applause. A Kempis offers a kind of spiritual anti-influencer ethic: build where time can’t repossess it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Mortality |
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