Even excellences become defects if they become notorious. Notoriety arises from singularity, which is always blamed: he that is singular is left severely alone... Even in matters of the intellect want of moderation may degenerate into loquacity.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
There is a line where being known for something good curdles into being notorious for it, and past that line even a virtue starts to cost you. Notoriety grows out of singularity, standing out too far and too loudly in any direction, and singularity is reflexively disliked and isolating; the person who is too conspicuous, even for an excellence, ends up left alone. Beauty flaunted becomes coxcombry, intellect unmoderated becomes loquacity, and any good quality pushed into a spectacle offends by the very attention it demands. The counsel is moderation in how you carry even your strengths: be excellent without making excellence a performance, be known without being notorious. The distinction is between a reputation that draws people and a conspicuousness that pushes them away.
Practice
- Carry even your strengths with moderation; an excellence turned loud and conspicuous curdles into a defect (maxim 245 warns against courting notice too).
- Avoid singularity for its own sake; standing out too far in any direction gets you noticed and then left alone.
- Watch the line between reputation and notoriety; the first draws people, the second, built on spectacle, pushes them away.
Use this when
- Use this when tempted to make a display of a genuine strength; the flaunted virtue offends by the attention it demands.
- Use it to check your own conspicuousness; even intellect, unmoderated, degenerates into the loquacity people avoid.
Ignore this when
- Don't confuse this with hiding your excellence entirely; the counsel is against notoriety, not against being known (maxim 277 still says display).
- Don't mute genuine distinctiveness into blandness; the target is the loud spectacle, not real quality (maxim 296 still prizes the great trait).
A picture of it
Genuinely brilliant, an academic makes his brilliance a spectacle: correcting everyone, performing his intellect in every room, unable to let a point pass unimproved, until the very excellence that should have drawn people begins to isolate him. His singularity is noticed and then avoided; colleagues route around the man who cannot be moderate about his own cleverness. The gift was real, but turned loud it became a defect, and the loquacity earned the contempt the substance never would have. When he learns to hold the same intellect with moderation, being excellent without performing it, the isolation lifts.
Even a virtue, turned loud, becomes a defect. Be excellent without spectacle, known without notoriety, or you will be left severely alone.