It is the end that crowns us, not the fight.

The line contrasts effort with outcome, suggesting that reputation and reward are ultimately determined by how a struggle concludes rather than by the struggle itself. It reflects a pragmatic, even slightly cynical, view of public judgment: people tend to remember the final result—victory, completion, survival—more than the courage or labor expended along the way. Read more broadly, it can be taken as advice about perseverance and finishing well: endurance matters because the “end” is what fixes meaning and value in retrospect. The aphoristic form also echoes older proverbial wisdom about success being measured by results.