When agon was king

In his Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari describes how the sculptor Donatello, awash in success and adulation in Padua, abruptly returned home to Florence, "saying that if he stayed where he was any longer he would forget all he knew because of their flattery, and that he was only too anxious to return to his own land, where he would be constantly criticized and so would have an incentive for studying and winning even greater glory."

~ Sprezzatura, 50 Ways Italian Genius Shaped the World.