Quotes about fame
page 2

“Ask anything of men. Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love, brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But don’t ask them to achieve self-respect. They will hate your soul.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Love, Men, Hate, Soul

“Simple, genuine goodness is the best capital to found the business of this life upon. It lasts when fame and money fail, and is the only riches we can take out of this world with us.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Men

Source: Little Men

Life, Money, World, Business

“Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

Source: Not That It Matters

Money, Business

“The thoughts of others
Were light and fleeting,
Of lovers' meeting
Or luck or fame.
Mine were of trouble,
And mine were steady;
So I was ready
When trouble came.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

Source: More Poems

Lovers, Light

“The mere suggestion of fame and fortune casts a glamour all its own. It is rather alarming how quickly people will turn someone else's fiction into fact in order to support their own fictions of themselves.”

Libba Bray book Rebel Angels

Source: Rebel Angels

People, Support

“I have learned to regard fame as a will-o-the-wisp which, when caught, is not worth the possession; but to please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms one's heart and brings its own reward.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

Personal inscription on a copy of Mother Goose in Prose (1897) which he gave to his sister, Mary Louise Baum Brewster, as quoted in The Making of the Wizard of Oz (1998) by Aljean Harmetz, p. 317
Letters and essays
Context: When I was young I longed to write a great novel that should win me fame. Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children. For aside from my evident inability to do anything "great," I have learned to regard fame as a will-o-the-wisp which, when caught, is not worth the possession; but to please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms one's heart and brings its own reward.

Love, Learning, Heart

“… art is made by the alone for the alone… The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication…”

Cyril Connolly (1903–1974) British author

Source: The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus

Art, Success

“Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.”

Alexander Pope An Essay on Man

Source: An Essay on Man

“Fame is a form, perhaps the worst form, of incomprehension.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Ficciones

Source: Ficciones

“What difference does it make after all? — anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what's heaven? what's earth? All in the mind.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Part Three, Ch. 11
Source: On the Road (1957)
Context: In 1942 I was the star in one of the filthiest dramas of all time. I was a seaman, and went to the Imperial Café on Scollay Square in Boston to drink; I drank sixty glasses of beer and retired to the toilet, where I wrapped myself around the toilet bowl and went to sleep. During the night at least a hundred seamen and assorted civilians came in and cast their sentient debouchements on me till I was unrecognizably caked. What difference does it make after all? — anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what's heaven? what's earth? All in the mind.

Men, World

“Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

Life, Wisdom, God, Success

“Why are we smiling when we loathe each other?’ ‘Why do we sell happiness to the readers of this magazine when we are profoundly unhappy ourselves, the slaves of fame?”

Paulo Coelho book The Zahir

Source: The Zahir

Smile, Happiness

“Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Success

“Fame is a vapor, popularity is an accident, riches take wings, those who cheer today may curse tomorrow and only one thing endures - character.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

“In the future everyone will have their fifteen minutes of fame”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

When asked about this quote, he would corrupt it intentionally, including:
1968 - 1974

Future

“Women can resist a man's love, a man's fame, a man's personal appearance, and a man's money, but they cannot resist a man's tongue when he knows how to talk to them.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: The Woman in White

Love, Women, Money, Appearance

“I think I know what military fame is; to be killed on the field of battle and have your name misspelled in the newspapers.”

William T. Sherman (1820–1891) American General, businessman, educator, and author.

Thinking

“In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Country

“Fame you'll be famous, as famous as can be, with everyone watching you win on TV, Except when they don't because sometimes they won't..”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Source: Oh, The Places You'll Go!

“Fame is a fickle food
Upon a shifting plate,
Whose table once a Guest, but not
The second time, is set.
Whose crumbs the crows inspect,
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the Farmer’s corn;
Men eat of it and die.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

The Single Hound, p. 257
Collected Poems (1993)

Men, Food, Time, Past

“Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

People, Idea

“The choice of life is not between fame and fortune, nor wealth and poverty, but between good and evil.”

Boyd K. Packer (1924–2015) American Mormon leader

Life, Evil, Wealth

“I'm going to paraphrase Thoreau here… rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness… give me truth.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Love, Money, Truth, Faith

“When a writer is swayed with his fame and his fortune, you can float him down the river with the turds.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“The rust will find the sword of fame,
The dust will hide the crown;
Ay, none shall nail so high his name
Time will not tear it down.”

John Vance Cheney (1848–1922) American writer

The Happiest Heart

Tear, Time

“Fame is what gets people to go watch your film. I'm just glad to be in a film i believe in. And if it take's fame to get people there, then it's my job. But i'd rather be a ghost writer than have my name down.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

Details Magazine, (1991)

People

“My big claim to fame during the three years I was at Stratford was understudying Henry V and going on without any rehearsal — and I tell that story in the show. … Tyrone Guthrie, a great English director of that time, said to me — I was understudying Chris Plummer — and they said, "Plummer's ill. Can you go on?" And I had never rehearsed the part, never spoken the part out loud. And I went on.”

William Shatner (1931) Canadian actor, musician, recording artist, author, and film director

"It's Shatner's World and He Wants You to See It" http://www.npr.org/2012/02/18/147090053/its-shatners-world-and-he-wants-you-to-see-it, NPR, 18 Feb 2012

Time, Parting

“Fame is but a beautiful classic delusion. The inspiration of the poet is like the inspiration of the Delphic oracles: what was once held divine is now confessed the promptings of an evil spirit mocking the votaries of whom it made victims. We firmly believe that the time is fast approaching when no more books will be written. The once writers: will say—“Why should we sacrifice our whole existence to obtain a vain praise, which, after all, never comes sufficiently home to us to be enjoyed? Why should we devote, to this most barren pursuit, industry and talent, which, in any other line, would be certain of that worldly success, which, as we live in the world, is the only success to be de sired?” Even poets must at last learn wisdom. The bitterness and the hollowness of praise will be perceived; and then who will be at the trouble of writing a book? Again we repeat, the time is fast approaching when no more books will be written.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Wisdom, Books, World, Beauty

“The truly enlightened man has no learning, no virtue, no accomplishments, no fame.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

38
Essays in Idleness (1967 Columbia University Press, Trns: Donald Keene)

Learning

“My teaming up with Amitabh Bachchan in Do Anjan earned me fame as an intense actress. Then it was Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Khubsoorat in 1978 that established me as an actress of repute.”

Rekha (1954) Indian film actress

The diva rules

“Fame far out-strips all Mischiefs in her course,
Which grows by Motion, gains, by flying, Force;
Kept under first by Fear, soon after shrouds,
Stalking or Earth, her Head amongst the Clouds.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Æneis

Fear, Flying

“You see only the productions of second-rate folk who are in a hurry to get wealth and fame. The true knowledge, the deadly knowledge, is still kept secret. But, believe me, my friend, it is there.”

John Buchan book The Power-House

Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 3 "Tells of a Midsummer Night"

Secret, Knowledge, Wealth

“It is a good lesson — though it may often be a hard one — for a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world’s dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of all significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Introduction: The Custom-House
The Scarlet Letter (1850)

World, Dreams

“Those who, like the present writer, never had the privilege of meeting Sidgwick can infer from his writings, and still more from the characteristic philosophic merits of such pupils of his as McTaggart and Moore, how acute and painstaking a thinker and how inspiring a teacher he must have been. Yet he has grave defects as a writer which have certainly detracted from his fame. His style is heavy and involved, and he seldom allowed that strong sense of humour, which is said to have made him a delightful conversationalist, to relieve the uniform dull dignity of his writing. He incessantly refines, qualifies, raises objections, answers them, and then finds further objections to the answers. Each of these objections, rebuttals, rejoinders, and surrejoinders is in itself admirable, and does infinite credit to the acuteness and candour of the author. But the reader is apt to become impatient; to lose the thread of the argument: and to rise from his desk finding that he has read a great deal with constant admiration and now remembers little or nothing. The result is that Sidgwick probably has far less influence at present than he ought to have, and less than many writers, such as Bradley, who were as superior to him in literary style as he was to them in ethical and philosophical acumen. Even a thoroughly second-rate thinker like T. H. Green, by diffusing a grateful and comforting aroma of ethical "uplift", has probably made far more undergraduates into prigs than Sidgwick will ever make into philosophers.”

C. D. Broad (1887–1971) English philosopher

From Five Types of Ethical Theory (1930)

Sense, Strong, Teachers, Reading

“I was never as cocksure again after that first LSD inspiration. Especially with fame and reputation. You become very uncertain, you have to follow your own act. I never did get that kind of spontaneous cocksureness back again. It’s like going from being the observer to the observed. I had been used to being invisible when I was young. After I became well-known, it was very hard to be anonymous in the world. Of course, at first I liked all the attention. Suddenly, good-looking girls were interested in me! Wow! I couldn’t believe it.”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

"R. Crumb, The Art of Comics No. 1" http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6017/the-art-of-comics-no-1-r-crumb, The Paris Review, Summer 2010, No. 193.

World, Girl

“Plainly Hugo was the greatest man of letters of his day. It has been given to few or none to live a life so full of effort and achievement, so rich in honour and success and fame. Born almost with the century, he was a writer at fifteen, and at his death he was writing still; so that the record of his career embraces a period of more than sixty years. There is hardly a department of art to a foremost place in which he did not prove his right. From first to last; from the time of Chateaubriand to the time of Zola, he was a leader of men; and with his departure from the scene the undivided sovereignty of literature became a thing of the past like Alexander's empire.”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

"Hugo"
Views and Reviews (1889)

Life, Death, Men, Art

“A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them;
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Voiceless; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Music, Singing

“Oh, fame is as the moon above,
Whose sun of light and life is love.
There is more in the smile of one gentle eye
Then the thousand pages of history;
Than the loudest plaudits the crowd can raise.
Take the gems in glory's coronal,
And one smile of beauty is worth them all.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Inez from The London Literary Gazette (24th May 1823)
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love, Life, Smile, Beauty

“The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Three: Words Misunderstood, Ch. 10

Marriage, Girl, Boy, Idea

“Nothing relieves Irish despair. The Irishman's complaint lies not with his circumstance, which might be rendered brilliant by labour or luck, but with injustice of existence itself. Death! How could a benevolent Deity gift us with life, only to set such a cruel term upon it? Irish despair knows no remedy. Love fades; fame is fleeting. The only cures are booze and sentiment. That's why the Irish are such noble drunks and glorious poets. No one sings like the Irish or mourns like them. Why? Because they're angels imprisoned in vessels of flesh.”

Steven Pressfield book Killing Rommel

Zachary Stein, p. 27
Killing Rommel (2008)

Love, Life, Death, Angels

“SCANALYZER is the one single, the ONLY study of the news in depth that’s processed by General Technics’ famed computer Shalmaneser, who sees all, hears all, knows all save only that which YOU, Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere, wish to keep to yourselves.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

context (1) “Scanalyze My Name“
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Study

“Let us say that the freedom exists, but it is limited to the one unique act of choosing the profession. Afterward all freedom is over. When he begins his studies at the university, the doctor, lawyer, or engineer is forced into an extremely rigid curriculum which ends with a series of examinations. If he passes them, he receives his license and can thereafter pursue his profession in seeming freedom. But in doing so he becomes the slave of base powers; he is dependent on success, on money, on his ambition, his hunger for fame, on whether or not people like him. He must submit to elections, must earn money, must take part in the ruthless competition of castes, families, political parties, newspapers. In return he has the freedom to become successful and well-to-do, and to be hated by the unsuccessful, or vice versa.”

Hermann Hesse book The Glass Bead Game

The Glass Bead Game (1943)

Money, Hunger, Hate, People

““…Mas‘ud hunted through the country around Bahraich, and whenever he passed by the idol temple of Suraj-kund, he was wont to say that he wanted that piece of ground for a dwelling-place. This Suraj-kund was a sacred shrine of all the unbelievers of India. They had carved an image of the sun in stone on the banks of the tank there. This image they called Balarukh, and through its fame Bahraich had attained its flourishing condition. When there was an eclipse of the sun, the unbelievers would come from east and west to worship it, and every Sunday the heathen of Bahraich and its environs, male and female, used to assemble in thousands to rub their heads under that stone, and do it reverence as an object of peculiar sanctity. Mas‘ud was distressed at this idolatry, and often said that, with God’s will and assistance, he would destroy that mine of unbelief, and set up a chamber for the worship of the Nourisher of the Universe in its place, rooting out unbelief from those parts…
“Meanwhile, the Rai Sahar Deo and Har Deo, with several other chiefs, who had kept their troops in reserve, seeing that the army of Islam was reduced to nothing, unitedly attacked the body-guard of the Prince. The few forces that remained to that loved one of the Lord of the Universe were ranged round him in the garden. The unbelievers, surrounding them in dense numbers, showered arrows upon them. It was then, on Sunday, the 14th of the month Rajab, in the aforesaid year 424 (14th June, 1033) as the time of evening prayer came on, that a chance arrow pierced the main artery in the arm of the Prince of the Faithful…”

Ghazi Saiyyad Salar Masud (1014) semi-legendary Muslim figure from India

Awadh (Uttar Pradesh), Mir‘at-i-Mas‘udi in Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own historians, Vol. II. p. 524-547

Love, God, Faith, Universe

“Fame is like a giant X-Ray. Once you are exposed beneath it, the very beatings of your heart are shown to a gaping world.”

Natacha Rambova (1897–1966) American film personality and fashion designer

On celebrity, p. 117
Photoplay: "Wedded and Parted" (December 1922)

World, Heart

“But those rare souls whose spirit gets magically into the hearts of men, leave behind them something more real and warmly personal than bodily presence, an ineffable and eternal thing. It is everlasting life touching us as something more than a vague, recondite concept. The sound of a great name dies like an echo; the splendor of fame fades into nothing; but the grace of a fine spirit pervades the places through which it has passed, like the haunting loveliness of mignonette.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

“The Book-End,” Columbus Dispatch (1923) Collecting Himself (1989).
From other writings

Life, Men, Soul, Heart

“In parade deploying
the armies of my pages,
I shall inspect
the regiments in line.
Heavy as lead,
my verses at attention stand,
ready for death
and for immortal fame.”

Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist and stage and film actor

"At the Top of My Voice" (1929-30); translation from Patricia Blake (ed.) The Bedbug and Selected Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975) p. 227

Death

“I sort of ended up in Los Angeles by accident. And it was sort of terrible to be jostled into this position of a fame-hungry starlet. Which is so honestly not me! In fact, I could use a bit more of that because I am such a hermit! So I allowed myself to get really bothered.”

Kate Beckinsale (1973) English actress

Allure magazine, March 2008.

Angels

“Twenty-eight years ago, I created my first game on an Apple II in my bedroom closet at a time when the interactive entertainment industry was taking its first baby steps. Today the games business has grown to a multi-billion dollar industry and we are just at the tip of the iceberg. I'm thrilled to have been a part of this successful journey and I'm extremely honored by the Academy's Hall of Fame induction.”

Richard Garriott (1961) video game developer, astronaut and entrepreneur

Press Statement for the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame http://uk.ign.com/articles/2005/11/09/richard-garriott-joins-gaming-hall-of-fame, 9 November, 2005.

Game, Business, Time, Success

“Now Stonewall Jackson is a man worth taking an interest in. Few people in history have achieved greater fame in a shorter period with less useful activity in the brainbox than Gen. Thomas J. Jackson. (long list of character deficiencies elided)…
His ineradicable fame rests almost entirely on the fact that he had a couple of small but inspiring victories when elsewhere Southern troops were being slaughtered and routed and by dint of having the best nickname any soldier has ever enjoyed.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 13 (p. 171)

People, History, Victory

“One to destroy, is murder by the law;
And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe;
To murder thousands takes a specious name,
War's glorious art, and gives immortal fame.”

Edward Young (1683–1765) English poet

Satire VII, l. 55.
Love of Fame (1725-1728)

War, Law, Art

“Fame is a four letter word and like tape, or zoom, or face, or pain, or life, or love, what ultimately matters is what we do with it.”

Fred Rogers (1928–2003) American television personality

When introduced to the TV Hall of Fame http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcNxY4TudXo

Love, Life, Pain

“My advice is to get a good agent and a good tax accountant if you ever make any money, and remember, you can't eat fame. And you can't write unless you want to write, and you can't want to unless you feel like it.”

William S. Burroughs book The Adding Machine: Collected Essays

"A Word to the Wise Guy"
The Adding Machine: Collected Essays (1985)

Money, Feeling

“Ambition has but one reward for all:
A little power, a little transient fame,
A grave to rest in, and a fading name.”

William Winter (1836–1917) American writer

"The Queen's Domain", The Queen's Domain, and other Poems (1858).

“If they are unwilling to give, they should at least lend with all readiness and alacrity, not with the prospect of receiving anything back except the principal. … In place of the interest which they determine not to accept they receive a further bonus of the fairest and most precious things that human life has to give, mercy neighborliness, charity, magnanimity, a good report and good fame. And what acquisition can rival these? Nay, even the great king will appear as the poorest of men if compared with a single virtue. For his wealth is soulless, buried deep in store-houses and recesses of the earth, but the wealth of virtue lies in the sovereign part of the soul, and the purest part of existence.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

213.
On the Virtues

Life, Men, Soul, Appearance

“SOME YEARS, like some poets, and politicians and some lovely women, are singled out for fame far beyond the common lot, and 1929 was clearly such a year.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter I, A Year To Remember, p. 1

Love, Women

“I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

February 1855
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

Housing

“Most professional women can recount ‘horror stories’ about discrimination they have suffered during their careers. My stories include social trivia as well as grand trauma. But some less common forms of discrimination came my way when, in mid-career, I married a colleague and we joined our professional lives just as fame (though not fortune) hit him. I watched as he was manufactured into an architectural guru before my eyes and, to some extent, on the basis of our joint work and the work of our firm.”

Denise Scott Brown (1931) American architect

"Sexism and the star system in architecture"

Women, Way, Suffering

“I'm the Vampire Lestat. Remember me? The vampire who became a super rock star, the one who wrote the autobiography? The one with the blond hair and the blue eyes, and the insatiable desire for visibility and fame? You remember.”

Anne Rice book The Queen of the Damned

first line
The Queen of the Damned (1988)

Star

“There was one guy that had an amazing claim to fame, in terms of drugs and sports. And his name was Dock Ellis. And Dock Ellis did an incredible thing. The one person who knows, thank you. Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter on LSD. Those of you who have taken LSD, tell the others how hard that might be. If I took LSD, I'd be talking to every blade of grass like "Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!"”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

Weapons of Self Destruction (2010)

Guy, Sport, Grass, Personality

“O fortunate one, thy vow hath become successful. The lord of the celestials hath been gratified, and is willing to give thee a son such as thou desirest, of superhuman achievements and great fame. He will be the oppressor of all enemies and possessed of great wisdom. Endued with a great soul, in splendour equal unto the Sun, invincible in battles, and of great achievements, he will also be extremely handsome. O thou of fair hips and sweet smiles, the lord of the celestials hath become gracious to thee. Invoking him, bring thou forth a child who will be the very home of all Kshatriya virtues.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Pandu to Kunti
The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXXIII

Wisdom, Smile, Home, Soul

“And so the blasts of calumny, howl they ever so fiercely over the good man's head, contribute to his juster appreciation and to his wider fame. Preserve only a good conscience toward God, and a loving purpose toward your fellow men, and you need not wince nor tremble, though the pack of the spaniel-hearted hounds snarl at your heels.”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 215.

Love, Men, God, Heart

“Physicians of the Utmost Fame
Were called at once; but when they came
They answered, as they took their Fees,
"There is no Cure for this Disease."”

Hilaire Belloc book Cautionary Tales for Children

"Henry King, Who Chewed Bits of String, and Was Early Cut off in Dreadful Agonies"
Cautionary Tales for Children (1907)

Disease

“Why bother to remake Fame if you don't have clue about why the 1980 movie was special? Why take a touching experience and make it into a shallow exercise? Why begin with a R-rated look at plausible kids with real problems and tame it into a PG-rated after-school special? Why cast actors who are sometimes too old and experienced to play seniors, let alone freshmen?”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/fame-2009 of Fame (23 Sep 2009) Reviews, Two star reviews

School, Exercises, Problem

“The Buddha also counseled the monks and nuns to avoid wasting any precious time by engaging in idle conversation, oversleeping, pursuing fame and recognition, chasing after desires, spending time with people of poor character, and being satisfied with only a shallow understanding of the teaching.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Old Path White Clouds : Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha (1991) Parallax Press ISBN 81-216-0675-6

People, Understanding, Time

“No way that any astronaut worth his salt volunteered for the space program to become a hero. You don't select astronauts who want fame and fortune. You select them because they're the best test pilots in the world, they know it, and it's a personal challenge for them. And the astronauts of today are exactly the same.”

Alan Shepard (1923–1998) American astronaut

Roxanne Roberts (May 4, 1991) "Blastoff to the Past - Tribute to America's First Men in Space", The Washington Post, p. D1.

World, Way, Personality

“Let no one charge us with capricious inconsistency in our actions against Albinus, and let no one think that I am disloyal to this alleged friend or lacking in feeling toward him. 2. We gave this man everything, even a share of the established empire, a thing which a man would hardly do for his own brother. Indeed, I bestowed upon him that which you entrusted to me alone. Surely Albinus has shown little gratitude for the many benefits I have lavished upon him. 3. Now |87 he is collecting an army to take up arms against us, scornful of your valor and indifferent to his pledge of good faith to me, wishing in his insatiable greed to seize at the risk of disaster that which he has already received in part without war and without bloodshed, showing no respect for the gods by whom he has often sworn, and counting as worthless the labors you performed on our joint behalf with such courage and devotion to duty. 4. In what you accomplished, he also had a share, and he would have had an even greater share of the honor you gained for us both if he had only kept his word. For, just as it is unfair to initiate wrong actions, so also it is cowardly to make no defense against unjust treatment. Now when we took the field against Niger, we had reasons for our hostility, not entirely logical, perhaps, but inevitable. We did not hate him because he had seized the empire after it was already ours, but rather each one of us, motivated by an equal desire for glory, sought the empire for himself alone, when it was still in dispute and lay prostrate before all. 5. But Albinus has violated his pledges and broken his oaths, and although he received from me that which a man normally gives only to his son, he has chosen to be hostile rather than friendly and belligerent instead of peaceful. And just as we were generous to him previously and showered fame and honor upon him, so let us now punish him with our arms for his treachery and cowardice. 6. His army, small and island-bred, will not stand against your might. For you, who by your valor and readiness to act on your own behalf have been victorious in many battles and have gained control of the entire East, how can you fail to emerge victorious with the greatest of ease when you have so large a number of allies and when virtually the entire army is here. Whereas they, by contrast, are few in number and lack a brave and competent general to lead them. 7. Who does not know Albinus' effeminate nature? Who does not know that his way |88 of life has prepared him more for the chorus than for the battlefield? Let us therefore go forth against him with confidence, relying on our customary zeal and valor, with the gods as our allies, gods against whom he has acted impiously in breaking his oaths, and let us be mindful of the victories we have won, victories which that man ridicules.”

Septimius Severus (145–211) Emperor of Ancient Rome

Herodian, Book 3, Chapter 6.

Life, God, Hate, Hostility

“I think that there is this idea that what you should go after is fame. That is a hugely mistaken idea because fame means absolutely nothing. This whole culture of wanting to become famous is on a hiding to nothing, a sign of a society that’s lost its way and will only judge people as being valid if they’re famous, which of course is all bullshit. As Tom Stoppard said, the only thing that fame means is that more people know you than you know.”

Jeremy Irons (1948) English actor

Jeremy Irons: Why our TV isn't what it used to be
The Telegraph
2008-12-20
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/drama/3870293/Jeremy-Irons-Why-our-TV-isnt-what-it-used-to-be.html
2011-08-11

People, Way, Idea, Thinking

“Ahmed comes back a conqueror, but what hath he found?
The cry of the orphan is loud on his ear,
And his eye hath beheld the young bride's bitter tear,
And the friend of his youth is left dead on the plain,
And the flower of his nobles return not again.
There are crowds that are filling the air with his name;
Do ye marvel the monarch is loathing his fame?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Golden Violet - The Eastern King
The Golden Violet (1827)

Youth, Flowers, Tear, Cry

“Thou treacherous, base deserter of my flame,
False to my passion, fatal to my fame,
Through what mistaken magic dost thou prove
So true to lewdness, so untrue to love?”

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647–1680) English poet, and peer of the realm

The Imperfect Enjoyment.
Other

Love, Passion, Falseness

“I hopped off the plane at LAX with a dream and my cardigan.
Welcome to the land of fame excess - am I going to fit in?
I jump into the cab, here I am for the first time,
I look to the right and I see the Hollywood sign.”

Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter

Party in the USA, her second hit song
Song lyrics

Dreams, Time

“Some may wish to argue that Hayek was simply born with a sort of natural pessimism or cynicism, and that this generated his long standing belief in the inherent limitations that humans face when they try to intervene in social phenomena. Perhaps. But it is also possible that this view was the product of his having come of age during the final collapse of an already broken-down empire, of having experienced the multiple forms of disaster that surrounded postwar Vienna and enveloped interwar central Europe, and of having witnessed the failures of various high-minded social experiments to achieve anything like what their exponents had promised. In bearing witness to so much tragedy Hayek was again very much a part of the larger Austrian tradition. His famed ‘‘epistemic pessimism’’ may well have been another result of that larger experience.”

Bruce Caldwell (economist) (1952) economic historian

"Hayek and the Austrian tradition", in Edward Feser(ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hayek (2006)

Age, Failure, Nature, Parting

“Lose thou no time that seek’st to garner fame,
Or wouldst deserve the favour of thy dame.”

Giovanni Fiorentino book Il Pecorone

Non perder tempo chi cerca aver fama,
voglia acquistar grazia di sua dama.
Il Pecorone, Giornata X., Novella II. Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 377.

Time

“The relation between experimentalists and theorists is often one of healthy competition for truth and less healthy competition for fame.”

Alvaro De Rujula (1944)

What is a "theoretical physicist"? http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/People/Theorists-en.html at CERN Public Web.

Truth

“I am a woman: tell me not of fame.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

“Though its fame is much restricted by its specialized nature, there is no doubt that Panini's grammar is one of the greatest intellectual achievements of any ancient civilization, and the most detailed and scientific grammar composed before the 19th century in any part of the world.”

Arthur Llewellyn Basham (1914–1986) British historian and Indologist

Professor A. L. Basham in: Daya Kishan Thussu Communicating India's Soft Power: Buddha to Bollywood https://books.google.co.in/books?id=Ab_QAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA47, Palgrave Macmillan, 24 October 2013, p. 47.

World, Nature, Parting

“England’s genius filled all measure
Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,
Gave to the mind its emperor,
And life was larger than before:
Nor sequent centuries could hit
Orbit and sum of Shakespeare’s wit.
The men who lived with him became
Poets, for the air was fame.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Solution http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&p=c&a=p&ID=20586&c=323, l. 35-42 1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

Life, Men, Pleasure, Soul

“I am vain—praise is opium, and the lip
Cannot resist the fascinating draught,
Though knowing its excitement is a fraud—
Delirious—a mockery of fame.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Fraud

“I have always regretted having gotten involved with literature up to my neck. I would have preferred to have been a monk; but, as I said, I was torn between wanting fame and wishing to renounce the world. The basic problem is that if God exists, what is the point of literature? And if He doesn’t exist, what is the point of literature? Either way, my writing, the only thing I have ever succeeded in doing, is invalidated.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

The Paris Review interview (1984)

God, World, Way, Literature

“It may not sound very consistent with any such professed humility on my part, if I say to you that, after having served for the Quaternions during fourteen years, and having (as America seems to think) won my Rachel—to be my own by an intellectual marriage—I now wish to wind up several scientific projects, from which those quaternions had for a long time diverted me; and feel as if I were entering, or had already entered, on a new harvest of labour and reputation. As to Fame, if it have not been won or earned already, it is not likely that any future exertion will make it mine.
But as to the Labour; that is a thing within everybody's power to judge of, even for himself. I have very long admired Ptolemy's description of his great astronomical Master, Hipparchus… "a labour-loving and truth-loving man."—Be such my epitaph!”

William Rowan Hamilton (1805–1865) Irish physicist, astronomer, and mathematician

Letter to Mrs. Wilde, (February 11, 1858) as quoted by Robert Perceval Graves, Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1889) Vol.3 https://books.google.com/books?id=0ODuAAAAMAAJ, p. 230

Love, Marriage, Truth, Feeling

“I hate publicity, celebrity, fame, and notoriety, all of which are associated with controversy in its public form. But, in fairness, all my life I've been rather upfront with my opinions and never hidden them on grounds of conformity or (I fear) politesse. However, until the wretched Polish consulate affair, I don't think I was ever controversial—I was certainly not known outside of the hermetic little world of the academy, and my contrarian scholarly writings aroused no great fuss.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

quoted in Evan R. Goldstein, "The Trials of Tony Judt", The Chronicle of Higher Education (January 06, 2010)

Life, Hate, World, Fear

“The more info I read, the more the Rock & Roll hall of fame seems anti-rock. Rock was not meant to be judged by panels of old people.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Chris Cornell official Twitter, April 15, 2009 https://twitter.com/chriscornell/status/1523685568, Solo career Era

People, Reading

“Are we going to make a supreme additional effort to remain a great Power, or are we going to slide away into what seem to be easier, softer, less strenuous, less harassing courses, with all the tremendous renunciations which that decision implies? Is not this the moment when all should hear the deep, repeated strokes of the alarm bell, and when all should resolve that it shall be a call to action, and not the knell of our race and fame?”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1938/nov/17/debate-on-the-address#S5CV0341P0_19381117_HOC_347 in the House of Commons (17 November 1938) The 1930s

Decision, Effort

“Were an energetic and judicious system to be proposed with your signature it would be a circumstance highly honorable to your fame... and doubly entitle you to the glorious republican epithet, The Father of your Country.”

Henry Knox (1750–1806) Continental Army and US Army general, US Secretary of War

Letter to George Washington http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-05-02-0095, urging Washington to attend the Philadelphia Convention. (March 19, 1787)

Country

“It seems to me a defect in our much famed Constitution, to have to part with an admirable Govt like Ld Salisbury's for no question of any importance or any particular reason, merely on account of the number of votes.”

Victoria of the United Kingdom (1819–1901) British monarch who reigned 1837–1901

Comment made after Salisbury lost power to Gladstone in 1892, quoted in Queen Victoria: A Biographical Companion by Helen Rappaport (2003), p. 331 http://books.google.com/books?id=NLGhimIiFPoC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA331#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Question, Parting

“The rural world was not ripe for him. A man should be only partially before his time—to be completely to the vanward in aspirations is fatal to fame. Had Philip's warlike son been intellectually so far ahead as to have attempted civilization without bloodshed, he would have been twice the godlike hero that he seemed, but nobody would have heard of an Alexander.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Bk. III, ch. 2
The Return of the Native (1878)

World, Time

“Men in great place are thrice servants,—servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Great Place
Essays (1625)

Men, Business

“It is only due to a lack of heart for the Way and a lack of skill in handling their daily conduct that people become vainly tied to fame and gain.”

Dogen book Shōbōgenzō

"Shobogenzo: The Treasure House of the Eye of the True Teaching" http://www.shastaabbey.org/pdf/shobo/029gyoji.pdf (2007) by Rev. Hubert Nearman, O.B.C. Chapter 29, p. 421

People, Way, Heart

“I was a student at Berkeley in the late Reagan years. We had a lot of ideas back then, big dreams about getting famous and destroying the "Beigeocracy" that we thought stifled and controlled American Letters. Everything seemed possible then: world war, literary fame … Anyway, something Really Big, with us at the center of it all.”

Mark Ames (1965) American writer and journalist

The Exile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia (2000)

War, World, Dreams, Idea

“The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

D 20
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook D (1773-1775)

“I won a noble fame;
But with a sudden frown,
The people snatched my crown,
And, in the mire, trod down
My lofty name.”

Theodore Tilton (1835–1907) American newspaper editor

Sir Marmaduke's Musings, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

People

“Who can you blame, parents or their friends or the children? In India every parent wants their child to earn more money and fame than any of their peers, no one wants their child to be set on a cultural journey and do tremendous things like other artists or musicians or sportsman have done. They think the entertainment sector won’t earn them any job or money. I blame the parents. They should inspire their children to pursue their interest along with the regular studies. I feel really sorry about this.”

Hariprasad Chaurasia (1938) Indian bansuri player

On Parents and Passion.
Melodies of Brindavan: Pandit Hariprasad Chourasia

Money, Children, Feeling, Thinking

“My attitude is one of unswerving devotion to myself. I am single-minded in my pursuit of money, fame and power. I also collect spoons.”

Shaun Micallef (1962) Australian actor

Money

“I have always been ambitious, no doubt about that. I always felt like I had to reach the dizzy heights of fame and success or whatever the heights are of a number of given professions I have dabbled in, to prove myself, "Stripper of the year" a bafta or whatever, for me it was by creating something interesting and entertaining or moving, but not by compromising the thing I was creating, that thing had to reach those heights, I guess it's about being accepted and loved a bit or a lot.”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

Stella Vine blog, http://web.archive.org/20060421143212/stellavine.blogspot.com/2006/03/harry-pye.html 2006-03-11 On ambition and creative drive.

Love, Success

“Certainly fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swoln, and drowns things weighty and solid.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Praise
Essays (1625)

Light

“Ben's Mr. Market allegory may seem out-of-date in today's investment world, in which most professionals and academicians talk of efficient markets, dynamic hedging and betas. Their interest in such matters is understandable, since techniques shrouded in mystery clearly have value to the purveyor of investment advice. After all, what witch doctor has ever achieved fame and fortune by simply advising "Take two aspirins?"”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1987 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1987.html Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

World, Understanding

“Though, by the logic of this tribe, the best promoters of India’s unity were the British. They did far more and succeeded to a much greater extent in imposing a unity on India. By that logic, General Dyer of the Jallianwala Bagh fame comes out with flying colours as the foremost builder of an Indian nation. He was also very ruthless in gunning down unarmed people who were not impressed by the “benefits of the British Raj.””

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

People, Flying

“Could Sania not find any eligible bachelor among 100 crore Indians, which includes 15 crore Muslims? It is India, which is responsible for her fame and by choosing a Pakistani cricketer as her life partner, she is insulting all Indians. We totally oppose the move.”

Pramod Muthalik (1963) Indian politician

On Indian tennis player Sania Mirza's marriage to Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik, as quoted in " Sania should not be allowed to play for India: Muthalik http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/sania-should-not-be-allowed-to-play-for-india-muthalik/article1-526359.aspx", Hindustan Times (2 April 2010)

Life