quotations about fame
There are names written in her immortal scroll at which Fame blushes!
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics: in the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims
Fame is an undertaker that pays but little attention to the living, but bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals, and follows them to the grave.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Man toils, and strives, and wastes his little life to claim--
At last the transient glory of a splendid name,
And have, perchance, in marble mockery a bust,
Poised on a pedestal, above his sleeping dust.
ANDREW DOWNING
"Fame"
There are decades in the making of the one man of renown;
Multitudes that go unnoticed who must wreathe for him a crown.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"Caelestis"
If you are someone, you know, with fame, whatever amount, it's good to be married to someone who's not impressed with that at all.
RAY ROMANO
The Ellen Show
All who have their reward on Earth, the fruits
Of painful superstition and blind zeal,
Naught seeking but the praise of men, here find
Fit retribution, empty as their deeds.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
Fame and fortune are as hard to find as a lightning strike.
P. N. ELROD
The Dark Sleep
Fame always brings loneliness. Success is as ice cold and lonely as the North Pole.
VICKI BAUM
Grand Hotel
Ah, fortune and fame shall follow me ... and I shall dwell in the world of the chosen for a few moments of fleeting ecstasy; ere the seven burly lads turn into creditors and hustle me off to debtors' prison at last.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Proud Highway
Fame: A few words upon a tombstone, and the truth of those not to be depended on.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
There is no business in this world so troublesome as the pursuit of fame: life is over before you have hardly begun your work.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Personal Merit", Les Caractères
I thought famous people were proud, unapproachable, that they despised the crowd, and by their fame and the glory of their name, as it were, revenged themselves on the vulgar herd for putting rank and wealth above everything. But here they cry and fish, play cards, laugh and get cross like everyone else!
ANTON CHEKHOV
The Seagull
Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune
Certain shades of limelight wreck a girl's complexion.
TRUMAN CAPOTE
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Fame or infamy, either one is preferable to being forgotten.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Brisingr
I think that's the thing about fame or any notoriety. It's an illusion that you don't have to play by the rules anymore, the rules of life.
TOM WAITS
"Strange Innocence", Vanity Fair, July 2001
Since the days of old, the wise and the good
Have been left alone in their solitude,
While merry drinkers have achieved enviable fame.
LI BAI
"An Exhortation"
To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten.
E. M. CIORAN
"Strangled Thoughts", The New Gods
Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property of a man.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Goethe
Of present fame think little, and of future less. The praises that we receive after we are buried, like the posies that are strewn over our graves, may be gratifying to the living, but they are nothing to the dead; the dead are gone, either to a place where they hear them not, or where, if they do, they will despise them.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon