Success Quote by George Eliot

Ambition, Eliot suggests, isn’t primarily a matter of hustle or raw talent; it’s a kind of devotion. “Augury” is doing heavy lifting here: success can’t be promised, only read in omens. The surest omen isn’t external validation but an internal, almost religious conviction that your work is worth giving your life to. Eliot frames professional excellence as an outgrowth of belief, not mere competence. If you think your vocation is “the finest in the world,” you’ll endure its humiliations, its slow rewards, its long apprenticeship. You won’t treat it as a day job; you’ll treat it as a calling.

The subtext is both bracing and suspicious. Bracing because it dignifies craft: the writer, doctor, or carpenter who loves the work itself is more likely to pursue mastery than the one chasing status. Suspicious because Eliot’s line also describes the psychology of self-justification. To declare your profession the best can be less humility than a protective myth: a way of turning personal choice into moral superiority. In an era when “profession” was increasingly tied to identity and respectability, that myth had real social value.

Context sharpens the point. Eliot wrote under a male pen name while building one of the great careers of Victorian letters; she knew that success depended on stubborn self-authorization in a culture eager to deny it. The sentence is encouragement with a sly edge: the world may not grant you legitimacy, so you’d better grant it to yourself first.