Ulysses completes Crowley's slow and sudden ascent to peak

There is an oft-quoted passage in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises that goes as follows:

"How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked. "Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually and then suddenly."

It is oft-quoted because it is such an accurate and pithy assessment of how fortunes (and wars, empires, power and physical health) are typically lost. But it might also apply to success. It comes slowly at first, and then all at once.