“I was about to say, 'Avoid fame like the plague,' but you know, they can cure the plague with penicillin these days.”
[199709242015.NAA10312@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997
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Larry Wall 294
American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl 1954Related quotes

“Avoid this crowd like the plague. And if they quote you, make damn sure they heard you.”
Advice about news reporters, to incoming first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, on a tour of the White House, as quoted in Newsweek magazine (30 November 1992)

WTF Is…? series, Guise of the Wolf (January 26, 2014)

Avons-nous fui la compagnie des personnes mondaines, que les Saints conseillent, surtout aux Ecclésiastiques, d'éviter, comme des pestiférés, que l'on ne voit que par nécessité , et dont on se sépare le plutôt que l'on peut?
Examens particuliers sur divers sujets, p. 322 http://books.google.com/books?id=esY9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA322
Examens particuliers sur divers sujets [Examination of Conscience upon Special Subjects] (1690)

Dijkstra (1972) The Humble Programmer http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340.html (EWD340).
1970s

“The idea had spread like wildfire …. like a moral plague, as one critic of the time had put it.”
Source: A Gift From Earth (1968), Ch. 7 : The Bleeding Heart
Context: There were organ banks all over the world, inadequately supplied by people kind enough to will their bodies to medical science.
How useful is the body of a man who dies of old age? How fast can you reach a car accident? And in 2043, Arkansas, which had never rescinded the death penalty, made the organ banks the official state method of execution.
The idea had spread like wildfire.... like a moral plague, as one critic of the time had put it.

Regarding directing his first feature film
"Big Ben makes directing debut" Robin Walker. Daily Post. Liverpool (UK): May 30, 2008.

“Alas! alas! how plague-spot like will sin
Spread over the wrung heart it enters in!”
Title poem, section VIII.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)