place in the sun

An advantageous or favorable position or situation. Your place in the sun will be assured when you win this match. After being a secondary player on the world stage, the emerging power began to look for its place in the sun.

A dominant or favorable position or situation, as in The Nobel prizewinners really enjoyed their place in the sun. This term may have been coined about 1660 by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal but became well known only in the late 1800s, when it was applied to Germany's position in world affairs, especially concerning its desire for more lands.

A dominant or favorable position or situation.

A highly favored position. The term appears to have been originated by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal, who wrote (ca. 1660), “There’s my place in the sun: behold the image and beginning of the entire earth’s usurpation.” It did not, however, become widely known until it was used around the turn of the twentieth century concerning Germany’s position in the world, at first by Bernhard von Bülow (1897) and later, several times, by Emperor William II, as a justification for his country’s territorial ambitions. Subsequently, the term came to be used in somewhat more benign fashion to mean simply the glow of public recognition and achievement. As the title of the 1951 film A Place in the Sun, about the idle rich and dubious morals, the term was used ironically.