Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.
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
Fame always brings loneliness. Success is as ice cold and lonely as the North Pole.
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.
Fame is a food that dead men eat.
HENRY AUSTIN DOBSON, Fame is a Food that Dead Men Eat
The desire for fame tempts even noble minds.
ST. AUGUSTINE, The City of God
- Well, there was a time I would have
- Hung around just to be seen
- Hey man, it's a shame when you start to fade
- Diamond rings and sparkly things
- Won't make your shine stay
In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.
ANDY WARHOL, Andy Warhol's Exposures
The fame of heroes owes little to the extent of their conquests and all to the success of the tributes paid to them.
JEAN GENET, Prisoner of Love
Stardom isn't a profession; it's an accident.
LAUREN BACALL, quoted in The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.
Fame can never make us lie down contentedly on a deathbed.
ALEXANDER POPE, letter to William Trumbell, Mar. 12, 1713
- Fame is a bee.
- It has a song--
- It has a sting--
- Ah, too, it has a wing.
EMILY DICKINSON, Fame is a bee
Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats.
- What is the end of Fame? 'tis but to fill
- A certain portion of uncertain paper:
- Some liken it to climbing up a hill,
- Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour:
- For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill,
- And bards burn what they call their "midnight taper,"
- To have, when the original is dust,
- A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.
Fame or infamy, either one is preferable to being forgotten.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI, Brisingr
No matter how much fame you have, it’s not something that belongs to you. If I’m famous, that doesn’t belong to me -- that belongs to you. If you can’t remember who I am, I’m no longer famous.
MICHAEL J. FOX, Esquire, Dec. 2007
Fame and fortune are as hard to find as a lightning strike.
P. N. ELROD, The Dark Sleep
The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well; and doing well whatever you do, without a thought of fame.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, Hyperion
- 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"
Fame is nothing but an empty name.
CHARLES CHURCHILL, The Ghost
- 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.
- O Fame! A bubble on life's wave,
- 'Tis tossed about, a worthless thing;
- The bubble breaks--'tis lost for aye,
- But leaves on heart a poignant sting....
- You cut your name on granit block;
- As ages come and pass away,
- Disintegrated is the stone,
- For all in nature must decay.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON, Thoughts
- Name and fame! to fly sublime
- Through the courts, the camps, the schools
- Is to be the ball of Time,
- Bandied in the hands of fools.
ALFRED TENNYSON, The Vision of Sin
That sort of reputation which precedes performance [is] often the larger part of a man's fame.
GEORGE ELIOT, Middlemarch
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