“The fame of an actor is won in minutes and seconds, not in years.”
Preface
Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1907)
Context: The fame of an actor is won in minutes and seconds, not in years. The latter are only helpful in the recurrence of opportunities; in the possibilities of repetition. It is not feasible, therefore, adequately to record the progress of his work. Indeed that work in its perfection cannot be recorded; words are, and can be, but faint suggestions of awakened emotion. The student of history can, after all, but accept in matters evanescent the judgment of contemporary experience. Of such, the weight of evidence can at best incline in one direction; and that tendency is not susceptible of further proof. So much, then, for the work of art that is not plastic and permanent. There remains therefore but the artist. Of him the other arts can make record in so far as external appearance goes. Nay, more, the genius of sculptor or painter can suggest — with an understanding as subtle as that of the sun-rays which on sensitive media can depict what cannot be seen by the eye — the existence of these inner forces and qualities whence accomplished works of any kind proceed. It is to such art that we look for the teaching of our eyes. Modern science can record something of the actualities of voice and tone. Writers of force and skill and judgment can convey abstract ideas of controlling forces and purposes; of thwarting passions; of embarrassing weaknesses; of all the bundle of inconsistencies which make up an item of concrete humanity. From all these may be derived some consistent idea of individuality. This individuality is at once the ideal and the objective of portraiture.
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Bram Stoker 84
Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for… 1847–1912Related quotes
“In the future everyone will have their fifteen minutes of fame”
When asked about this quote, he would corrupt it intentionally, including:
1968 - 1974
“Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.”
Ruhm muß daher erst erworben werden: die Ehre hingegen braucht bloß nicht verloren zu gehen.
Vol. 1. Ch. 4: Position, or a Man's Place in the Estimation of Others, §4-Honor
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life
On her shows
Source: On Pyaar Kii Ye Ek Kahaani http://www.tellychakkar.com/tv/interviews/i-am-very-much-single-and-definitely-not-married-sukirti-kandpal/
“Yet have we well begun,
Battles so bravely won
Have ever to the sun
By fame been raisëd.”
Source: To the Cambro-Britons and Their Harp, his Ballad of Agincourt (1627), Lines 29-32.
As quoted in " A Film of One's Own http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/magazine/03actesses.html" by Lynn Hirschberg at The New York Times (September 3, 2006)
Sir Marmaduke's Musings, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“Enjoy every minute of life. Never second-guess life.”
How to be like Mike (2005)
“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
No known source in Emerson's works; first found as a piece of anonymous folk-wisdom in a 1936 newspaper column:
: Every minute you are angry, you lose 60 seconds of happiness.
:* Junius, "Office Cat" https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/85995624/, The Daily Freeman [Kingston, NY] (30 December 1936), p. 6
Misattributed