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.
How great are the dangers I face to win a good name in Athens.
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.
Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.
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.
Fame always brings loneliness. Success is as ice cold and lonely as the North Pole.
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.
The strongest poison ever known came from Caesar's laurel crown.
I must say, I don't feel very qualified to be a pop star. I feel very awkward at times in the role.
People should realize we're jerks just like them.
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.
A sign of celebrity is often that their name is worth more than their services.
Popular applause veers with the wind.
But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity.
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.
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!
Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.
I awoke one morning and found myself famous.
Folly loves the martyrdom of fame.
Fame is the thirst of youth.
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.
To many fame comes too late.
Fame is only good for one thing-they will cash your check in a small town.
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.
When you can do the common things in life in a uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.
I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue than why I have one.
After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.
It often happens that those of whom we speak least on earth are best known in heaven.
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.
Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people who we don't know, and who don't know us.
Let us not disdain glory too much; nothing is finer, except virtue. The height of happiness would be to unite both in this life.
The present condition of fame is merely fashion.
True glory takes root, and even spreads; all false pretences, like flowers, fall to the ground; nor can any counterfeit last long.
Glory follows virtue as if it were its shadow.
To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten.
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.
I am not concerned that I am not known, I seek to be worthy to be known.
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!
Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, and now that, and changes name as it changes direction.
We movie stars all end up by ourselves. Who knows? Maybe we want to.
A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.
Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.
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.
There has never been a statue erected to the memory of someone who let well enough alone.
Fame is proof that the people are gullible.
What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.
I was the only one there I never heard of.
There have been as great souls unknown to fame as any of the most famous.
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.
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.
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.
What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.
Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.
If you modestly enjoy your fame you are not unworthy to rank with the holy.
There are names written in her immortal scroll at which Fame blushes!
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.
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.
It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour.
Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else.
How vain, without the merit, is the name.
— Homer
I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.
Once you become famous, there is nothing left to become but infamous.
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.
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.
It is a wretched thing to live on the fame of others.
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?
The fame of great men ought to be judged always by the means they used to acquire it.
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.
Some people obtain fame, others deserve it.
Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.
Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime. And, departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time.
I won't be happy till I'm as famous as God.
— Madonna
I had it all and blew it.
May the countryside and the gliding valley streams content me. Lost to fame, let me love river and woodland.
I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.
If fame is to come only after death, I am in no hurry for it.
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.
A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.
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.
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.
In the world of the celebrity, the hierarchy of publicity has replaced the hierarchy of descent and even of great wealth.
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.
Not to know me argues yourselves unknown.
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.
A sex symbol becomes a thing. I hate being a thing.
All the fame you should look for in life is to have lived it quietly.
Being famous was extremely disappointing for me. When I became famous it was a complete drag and it is still a complete drag.
It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.
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.
The love of glory gives an immense stimulus.
— Ovid
It is better to be a has-been than a never-was.
The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.
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.
I want to be famous everywhere.
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.
Heartthrobs are a dime a dozen.
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.
What's fame? a fancy'd life in other's breath. A thing beyond us, even before our death.
'Tis the white stag, Fame, we're a-hunting, bid the world's hounds come to horn!
Riches: A dream in the night. Fame: A gull floating on water.
Few people rise to our esteem upon closer scrutiny.
Fame is a constant effort
Oblivion is the rule and fame the exception, of humanity.
Renown? I've already got more of it than those I respect, and will never have as much as those for whom I feel contempt..
To become a celebrity is to become a brand name. There is Ivory Soap, Rice Krispies, and Philip Roth. Ivory is the soap that floats; Rice Krispies the breakfast cereal that goes snap-crackle-pop; Philip Roth the Jew who masturbates with a piece of liver.
Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.
The majority of pop stars are complete idiots in every respect.
The highest form of vanity is love of fame.
Of all the possessions of this life fame is the noblest; when the body has sunk into the dust the great name still lives.
Fame is something that must be won. Honor is something that must not be lost.
The longer a man's fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming.
We always hear about the haves and the have-nots. Why don't we hear about the doers and the do-nots.
Glory is like a circle in the water, which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, till, by broad spreading, it disperse to naught.
Celebrity is never more admired than by the negligent.
Death makes no conquest of this conqueror: For now he lives in fame, though not in life.
Time hath a wallet at his back, wherein he puts. Alms for oblivion, a great-sized monster of ingratitudes.
Because I have conducted my own operas and love sheep-dogs; because I generally dress in tweeds, and sometimes, at winter afternoon concerts, have even conducted in them; because I was a militant suffragette and seized a chance of beating time to The March of the Women from the window of my cell in Holloway Prison with a tooth-brush; because I have written books, spoken speeches, broadcast, and don't always make sure that my hat is on straight; for these and other equally pertinent reasons, in a certain sense I am well known.
Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.
— Socrates
The love of the famous, like all strong passions, is quite abstract. Its intensity can be measured mathematically, and it is independent of persons.
Fame has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it, we must direct our lives so as to please the fancy of men.
What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing, and for whom you care as little.
The love of fame is the last weakness which even the wise resign.
Even the best things are not equal to their fame.
The difference between great celebrities and the unknown is the former failed and yet went at it again; the latter gave up in despair.
Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being somebody, to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his over-animation. One can either see or be seen.
The fame you earn has a different taste from the fame that is forced upon you.
Men's fame is like their hair, which grows after they are dead, and with just as little use to them.
Each man has his appointed day: short and irreparable in the brief life of all, but to extend our fame by our deeds, this is the work of mankind.
— Virgil
Fame hides her head among the clouds.
— Virgil
What a heavy burden is a name that has become famous too soon.
— Voltaire
The day will come when everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.
Being a sex symbol was rather like being a convict.
What desire for fame attends both great and small; better be damned than mentioned not at all!
Sometimes I wish I weren't famous.