The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life: Try to be

In the immortal words of Robert Browning, “The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life: Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!” Here speaks a poet who understood the sacred fire of human striving — the noble pursuit of excellence that transcends the boundaries of success and failure. These words are a hymn to aspiration, to the courage of those who dare to reach beyond their mortal limits. Browning reminds us that it is not the attainment of greatness that sanctifies a life, but the striving toward it — the effort itself, the devotion of heart and soul to an ideal beyond comfort or certainty.

Robert Browning, the great Victorian poet, lived in an age of doubt — a time when faith, reason, and progress wrestled for dominion over the human spirit. Yet amid the turmoil of his era, Browning’s voice rose with unshakable optimism. He believed that the human soul was made for ascent, that to reach toward the impossible was to touch the divine. In this particular line, he summons the image of William Shakespeare, the supreme genius of the English tongue, as the symbol of ultimate mastery. But his exhortation — “Try to be Shakespeare” — is not a command to replicate another’s greatness. It is a call to awaken one’s own highest potential, to give one’s life wholly to the pursuit of one’s art, one’s truth, one’s purpose — and then to entrust the outcome to fate.

The ancients would have understood this wisdom well. In the Greek world, the heroes of old — Achilles, Odysseus, and Heracles — did not measure their worth by whether they lived or died, but by the glory of their striving. Achilles chose a short life of undying fame over a long life of obscurity, for he knew that the soul’s greatness is revealed not in safety, but in struggle. So too does Browning remind us that the act of reaching toward excellence ennobles the spirit, even if the summit remains beyond reach. To strive toward one’s ideal is to live deeply; to settle for ease is to die before one’s time.

Consider the life of Leonardo da Vinci, whose restless curiosity led him across the borders of art, science, and invention. He left countless works unfinished — plans half-drawn, devices unrealized, ideas scattered like seeds in the wind. Yet who would call him a failure? His unfinished labors themselves were revelations of genius, proof that the act of seeking truth, though incomplete, is greater than complacency in mediocrity. Like Browning’s ideal man, Leonardo’s life was made great not by perfection, but by the magnitude of his aim.

“The aim,” Browning tells us, “if reached or not, makes great the life.” These words are a balm for every heart that has toiled without recognition, for every artist whose work went unseen, for every dreamer who planted seeds they would never live to harvest. Greatness is not the prize at the end of the path; it is the path itself. The sweat, the doubt, the persistence — these are the fires that temper the soul. When one lives with purpose, even failure becomes a form of triumph, for it proves that one has dared to live fully, to risk everything for something eternal.

The lesson of this quote is clear: do not measure your life by the applause of others or by the trophies of success. Measure it by the height of your aspiration and the honesty of your effort. Set your sights high — impossibly high — and pour yourself into the pursuit of your calling. Whether you reach your goal or not, you will have lived a life of meaning, for you will have walked in the company of the gods, whose joy lies not in victory but in creation itself.

So, children of ambition and seekers of light, take Browning’s counsel to heart: “Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate.” Do not fear failure, for the divine spark within you was not born for small things. Strive to write your verse in the great poem of existence. Labor with love, dream without apology, and let destiny weave from your effort what it will. For the gods do not reward those who succeed — they bless those who try.

Thus spoke Robert Browning, poet of the eternal climb, whose words echo through time as a challenge and a comfort: to strive, to rise, to aspire endlessly — for it is the striving itself that makes a soul immortal.