Quotes about fame

It's too bad I'm not as wonderful a person as people say I am, because the world could use a few people like that.

— Alan Alda

How great are the dangers I face to win a good name in Athens.

— Alexander The Great

A celebrity is a person who works hard all of their life to become well known, and then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.

— Fred A. Allen

Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.

— W. H. Auden

Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.

— Francis Bacon

Fame always brings loneliness. Success is as ice cold and lonely as the North Pole.

— Vicki Baum

Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.

— Alan Bennett

The strongest poison ever known came from Caesar's laurel crown.

— William Blake

I must say, I don't feel very qualified to be a pop star. I feel very awkward at times in the role.

— Edward De Bono

People should realize we're jerks just like them.

— Edward De Bono

Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models. We lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous but are famous because they are great. We come closer and closer to degrading all fame into notoriety.

— Daniel J. Boorstin

A sign of celebrity is often that their name is worth more than their services.

— Daniel J. Boorstin

Popular applause veers with the wind.

— John Bright

But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity.

— Sir Thomas Browne

There is not in the world so toilsome a trade as the pursuit of fame; life concludes before you have so much as sketched your work.

— Jean De La Bruyere

Happy is the man who hath never known what it is to taste of fame --to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a Hell!

— Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.

— Edmund Burke

I awoke one morning and found myself famous.

— Lord Byron

Folly loves the martyrdom of fame.

— Lord Byron

Fame is the thirst of youth.

— Lord Byron

My great comfort is, that the temporary celebrity I have wrung from the world has been in the very teeth of all opinions and prejudices. I have flattered no ruling powers; I have never concealed a single thought that tempted me.

— Lord Byron

To many fame comes too late.

— Luis De Camoens

Fame is only good for one thing-they will cash your check in a small town.

— Truman Capote

Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such; it is an accident, not a property of man.

— Thomas Carlyle

When you can do the common things in life in a uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.

— George Washington Carver

I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue than why I have one.

— Cato The Elder

After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.

— Cato The Elder

It often happens that those of whom we speak least on earth are best known in heaven.

— Nicolas Caussin

If you are ambitious of climbing up to the difficult, and in a manner inaccessible, summit of the Temple of Fame, your surest way is to leave on one hand the narrow path of Poetry, and follow the narrower track of Knight-Errantry, which in a trice may raise you to an imperial throne.

— Miguel De Cervantes

Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people who we don't know, and who don't know us.

— Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort

Let us not disdain glory too much; nothing is finer, except virtue. The height of happiness would be to unite both in this life.

— Vicomte De Chateaubriand

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

True glory takes root, and even spreads; all false pretences, like flowers, fall to the ground; nor can any counterfeit last long.

— Marcus T. Cicero

Glory follows virtue as if it were its shadow.

— Marcus T. Cicero

To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten.

— E. M. Cioran

Acquaintance lessens fame.

— Claudius

Of present fame think little, and of future less; the praises that we receive after we are buried, like the flowers that are strewed over our grave, may be gratifying to the living, but they are nothing to the dead.

— Charles Caleb Colton

I am not concerned that I am not known, I seek to be worthy to be known.

— Confucius

Fame is like a shaved pig with a greased tail, and it is only after it has slipped through the hands of some thousands, that some fellow, by mere chance, holds on to it!

— Davy Crockett

Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, and now that, and changes name as it changes direction.

— Dante Alighieri

We movie stars all end up by ourselves. Who knows? Maybe we want to.

— Bette Davis

A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.

— Miles Davis

Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.

— Benjamin Disraeli

There has never been a statue erected to the memory of someone who let well enough alone.

— Jules Ellinger

Fame is proof that the people are gullible.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.

— Desiderius Erasmus

I was the only one there I never heard of.

— Barry J. Farber

There have been as great souls unknown to fame as any of the most famous.

— Benjamin Franklin

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.

— Benjamin Franklin

Fame is the echo of actions, resounding them to the world, save that the echo repeats only the last art, but fame relates all, and often more than all.

— Thomas Fuller

If I'm such a legend, then why am I so lonely? Let me tell you, legends are all very well if you've got somebody around who loves you.

— Judy Garland

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

If you modestly enjoy your fame you are not unworthy to rank with the holy.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

There are names written in her immortal scroll at which Fame blushes!

— William Hazlitt

The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time.

— William Hazlitt

Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity.

— William Hazlitt

It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour.

— Lillian Hellman

Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

How vain, without the merit, is the name.

— Homer

I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

— Aldous Huxley

Once you become famous, there is nothing left to become but infamous.

— Don Johnson

He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds; but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel.

— Samuel Johnson

To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.

— Samuel Johnson

It is a wretched thing to live on the fame of others.

— (Decimus Junius Juvenalis) Juvenal

Who would wish to be among the commonplace crowd of the little famous -- who are each individually lost in a throng made up of themselves?

— John Keats

The fame of great men ought to be judged always by the means they used to acquire it.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Throughout my life, I have seen narrow-shouldered men, without a single exception, committing innumerable stupid acts, brutalizing their fellows and perverting souls by all means. They call the motive for their actions fame.

— Comte De Isidore Ducasse Lautreamont

Some people obtain fame, others deserve it.

— Doris Lessing

Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime. And, departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I won't be happy till I'm as famous as God.

— Madonna

I had it all and blew it.

— Mickey Mantle

May the countryside and the gliding valley streams content me. Lost to fame, let me love river and woodland.

— Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro

I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.

— Marcus Valerius Martial

If fame is to come only after death, I am in no hurry for it.

— Marcus Valerius Martial

It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.

— W. Somerset Maugham

A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.

— H. L. Mencken

Fame is an illusive thing -- here today, gone tomorrow. The fickle, shallow mob raises its heroes to the pinnacle of approval today and hurls them into oblivion tomorrow at the slightest whim; cheers today, hisses tomorrow; utter forgetfulness in a few months.

— Henry Miller

The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition. In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more efficiency than anyone else thereby gains social access to the President of the United States.

— C. Wright Mills

In the world of the celebrity, the hierarchy of publicity has replaced the hierarchy of descent and even of great wealth.

— C. Wright Mills

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.

— John Milton

Not to know me argues yourselves unknown.

— John Milton

Fame will go by and, so long, I've had you, fame. If it goes by, I've always known it was fickle. So at least it's something I experienced, but that's not where I live.

— Marilyn Monroe

A sex symbol becomes a thing. I hate being a thing.

— Marilyn Monroe

All the fame you should look for in life is to have lived it quietly.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Being famous was extremely disappointing for me. When I became famous it was a complete drag and it is still a complete drag.

— Van Morrison

It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.

— Vladimir Nabokov

A star on a movie set is like a time bomb. That bomb has got to be defused so people can approach it without fear.

— Jack Nicholson

The love of glory gives an immense stimulus.

— Ovid

It is better to be a has-been than a never-was.

— Cecil Parkinson

The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.

— Blaise Pascal

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

— Blaise Pascal

I want to be famous everywhere.

— Luciano Pavarotti

Now there is fame! Of all -- hunger, misery, the incomprehension by the public -- fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation of God by the artist. It is sad. It is true.

— Pablo Picasso

Heartthrobs are a dime a dozen.

— Brad Pitt

True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written; in writing what deserves to be read; and in so living as to make the world happier and better for our living in it.

— Pliny The Elder

What's fame? a fancy'd life in other's breath. A thing beyond us, even before our death.

— Alexander Pope

Tis the white stag, Fame, we're a-hunting, bid the world's hounds come to horn!

— Ezra Pound

Riches: A dream in the night. Fame: A gull floating on water.

— Chinese Proverb