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 is nothing but an empty name.
CHARLES CHURCHILL, The Ghost
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