Quotes about fame (590 quotes, page 3) | Quotes of famous people

“The moral ideal has disappeared in all that has to do with international relations. The gain-seeking impulse supported by brute force has taken its place, and so far as the surface of things is concerned human civilization has gone back a full thousand years. Inconceivable though it be, we are brought face to face in this twentieth century with governments of peoples once great and highly civilized, whose word now means absolutely nothing. A pledge is something not to be kept, but to be broken. Cruelty and national lust have displaced human feeling and friendly international co-operation. Human life has no value, and the savings of generations are wasted month by month and almost day by day in mad attempts to dominate the whole world in pursuit of gain.
How has all this been possible? What has happened to the teachings and inspiring leadership of the great prophets and apostles of the mind, who for nearly three thousand years have been holding before mankind a vision of the moral ideal supported by intellectual power? What has become of the influence and guidance of the great religions Christian, Moslem, Hebrew, Buddhist with their counsels of peace and good-will, or of those of Plato and of Aristotle, of St. Augustine and of St. Thomas Aquinas, and of the outstanding captains of the mind Spanish, Italian, French, English, German who have for hundreds of years occupied the highest place in the citadel of human fame? The answer to these questions is not easy. Indeed, it sometimes seems impossible.
Are we, then, of this twentieth century and of this still free and independent land to lose heart and to yield to the despair which is becoming so widespread in countries other than ours? Not for one moment will we yield our faith or our courage! We may well repeat once more the words of Abraham Lincoln: "Most governments have been based on the denial of the equal rights of men, ours began by affirming those rights. We made the experiment, and the fruit is before us. Look at it think of it!"
However dark the skies may seem now, however violent and apparently irresistible are the savage attacks being made with barbarous brutality upon innocent women and children and non-combatant men, upon hospitals and institutions for the care of the aged and dependent, upon cathedrals and churches, upon libraries and galleries of the world s art, upon classic monuments which record the architectural achievements of centuries we must not despair. Our spirit of faith in the ultimate rule of the moral ideal and in the permanent establishment of liberty of thought, of speech, of worship and of government will not, and must not, be permitted to weaken or to lose control of our mind and our action.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)

Life , Women , Men , Children

“No American has carried greater fame out of the White House than this silent man who leaves it today.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

Regarding Ulysses S. Grant (4 March 1877), as quoted in Grant: A Biography https://books.google.com/books?id=cv5IbR5f9oMC&pg=PA449&lpg=PA449&dq=%22No+American+has+carried+greater+fame+out+of+the+White+House+than+this+silent+man+who+leaves+it+today%22&source=bl&ots=HoaHfwjqo6&sig=uaEqRbH27mRCUcR_OZatQlYcFK0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=owv8VPGnIIHsgwSyioC4AQ&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22No%20American%20has%20carried%20greater%20fame%20out%20of%20the%20White%20House%20than%20this%20silent%20man%20who%20leaves%20it%20today%22&f=false (1981), by William S. McFeely, p. 449
1870s

Housing

“There are two types of education: education for livelihood and education for life. When we study in college, it helps us to get a job so that we can earn a living. We can become a doctor, a scientist, an engineer or whatever we want. We may go on to attain wealth, possession and fame. All of this comes from education for livelihood. But this alone will never make our life full and complete. Education is not only to help us live a comfortable life of plenty. When our plans fall apart, when we face failure and loss, when we are knocked down, education should help us get back on our feet. Education should help us regain our mental equipoise, self-confidence and positive attitude, so that we can continue forward. This is why education for life is as important as education for livelihood. Education for life is spirituality.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Amritanandamayi's Address Upon Receiving an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the State University of New York (2010)

Life , Education , Confidence , Failure

“Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low,
With his back to the field and his feet to the foe,
And leaving in battle no blot on his name,
Look proudly to heaven from the death-bed of fame.”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

Lochiel's Warning (1802)

Death

“What, for instance, induced me, when so far distant from my country, voluntarily to devote myself to her cause? Her commerce? I neither knew nor cared any thing about it. Her funds? I was so happy as hardly to understand the meaning of the word. Her lands? I could, alas! lay claim to nothing but the graves of my parents.—What, then, was the stimulus? What was I proud of? It was the name and fame of England. Her laws, her liberties, her justice, her might; all the qualities and circumstances that had given her renown in the world, but above all her deeds in arms, her military glory.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register (27 October 1804).

World , Justice , Law , Understanding

“If there be in nature such a principle as justice, it is necessarily the only political principle there ever was, or ever will be. All the other so-called political principles, which men are in the habit of inventing, are not principles at all. They are either the mere conceits of simpletons, who imagine they have discovered something better than truth, and justice, and universal law; or they are mere devices and pretences, to which selfish and knavish men resort as means to get fame, and power, and money.”

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist

Section VIII, p. 15
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter II. The Science of Justice (Continued)

Men , Money , Truth , Justice

“The aspiring youth that fired the Ephesian dome
Outlives in fame the pious fool that rais'd it.”

Colley Cibber Richard III

Act III, scene 1. Similar thought by Sir Thomas Browne.
Richard III (altered) (1700)

Youth , Fools

“Fame to a woman is indeed but a royal mourning in purple for happiness.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Happiness

“Welcome, brave Hero, to this course Retreat,
Thou who excell'st whatever Rome call'd great;
Great as thou art, yet others of thy Name
Shall thee transcend in martial Acts and Fame.
Two shall their Names from Africa receive,
As Asia did to thee thy Glories give.”

Jane Barker (1652–1732) British writer

Book II
Exilius http://www.pierre-marteau.com/editions/1715-exilius.html (1715)

Art

“Ah, fortune and fame shall follow me…and I shall dwell in the world of the chosen for a few moments of fleeting ecstasy; ere the seven burly lads turn into creditors and hustle me off to debtors' prison at last.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Letter to Porter Bibb III (6 February 1957), p. 44
1990s, The Proud Highway : The Fear and Loathing Letters Volume I (1997)

World

“Enjoy a cup of wine while you're alive!
Do not care if your fame will not survive!”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

"Hard Is the Way of the World" III http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?no=84&l=Tangshi, trans. Witter Bynner

Wine

“Entertainers and sports figures achieve fame and wealth but find the world empty and dull without the solace and stimulation of drugs.”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

Address at Iona College (1984)

World , Sport , Wealth

“The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of dead men.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

Lectures on the English Poets http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16209/16209.txt (1818), Lecture VIII, "On the Living Poets"

Men , Dead

“But whither am I strayed? I need not raise
Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise;
Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built;
Nor needs thy juster title the foul guilt
Of Eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,
Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred slain.”

John Denham (1615–1669) English poet and courtier

On Mr. John Fletcher's Works. Compare: "Poets are sultans, if they had their will; For every author would his brother kill", Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery, Prologues (republished in Dramatic Works, 1739); "Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne", Alexander Pope, Prologue to the Satires, line 197.

Men

“Love must kiss that mortal’s eyes
Who hopes to see fair Arcady.
No gold can buy you entrance there;
But beggared Love may go all bare—
No wisdom won with weariness;
But Love goes in with Folly’s dress—
No fame that wit could ever win;
But only Love may lead Love in.”

Henry Cuyler Bunner (1855–1896) American writer

The Way to Arcady. Compare Louise Chandler Moulton, The Secret of Arcady (1892).

Love , Wisdom , Hope , Kiss

“For the majority, I take it, who live all their lives with such obtuse faculties of thinking, it is a difficult thing to perform this feat of mental analysis and of discriminating the material vehicle from the immanent beauty, … Owing to this men give up all search after the true Beauty. Some slide into mere sensuality. Others incline in their desires to dead metallic coin. Others limit their imagination of the beautiful to worldly honours, fame, and power. There is another class which is enthusiastic about art and science. The most debased make their gluttony the test of what is good. But he who turns from all grosser thoughts and all passionate longings after what is seeming, and explores the nature of the beauty which is simple, immaterial, formless, would never make a mistake like that when he has to choose between all the objects of desire; he would never be so misled by these attractions as not to see the transient character of their pleasures and not to win his way to an utter contempt for every one of them. This, then, is the path to lead us to the discovery of the Beautiful. All other objects that attract men's love, be they never so fashionable, be they prized never so much and embraced never so eagerly, must be left below us, as too low, too fleeting, to employ the powers of loving which we possess; not indeed that those powers are to be locked up within us unused and motionless; but only that they must first be cleansed from all lower longings; then we must lift them to that height to which sense can never reach.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

On Virginity, Chapter 11

Love , Men , Pleasure , Beauty

“Fame is a by-product. Fame is something that should happen because you do work that speaks to people and people want to know about your work. Unfortunately the personality of people has taken over from the work and the artistry and it's this thing now that stands on its own. I don't think one should ever aspire to being famous.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Madonna Interview : Q Magazine (May 2008), Q, 2008-05-01 http://allaboutmadonna.com/madonna-library/madonna-interview-q-magazine-may-2008,

People , Thinking , Personality

“I don´t feel famous, I am the same as a waiter or anybody that works in the club, there are people with fame and money but no feelings, and thats what´s important.”

Cuauhtémoc Blanco (1973) Mexican footballer

Interview with BigSoccer.com

Money , People , Feeling

“Novelists, playwrights, painters and others may hold in their heads the expectation of fame, but not poets. Having chosen that road, all one can dream of is the jealousy of one's rivals. Celebrity is unexpected and almost unseemly--it forces one to wear a constant look of chagrin, if that is possible. Unless you are Byron, who was the first poet to become a star. At its worst, fame means being known by strangers--enough to bring on waves of paranoia.”

Billy Collins (1941) American poet

Interview with Kritya: In the Name of Poetry

Jealousy , Dreams , Star

“There's not a thing on earth that I can name,
So foolish, and so false, as common fame.”

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

Did e'er this Saucy World.
Other

Falseness

“Happy is the man who hath never known what it is to taste of fame — to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a hell.”

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873) English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician

Last of the Barons (1843), Book v, Chapter i.

Hell , Happiness

“No other fame can be compared with that of Jesus. He has a place in the human heart, that no one who ever lived has in any measure rivaled. No name is pronounced with a tone of such love and veneration. All other laurels wither before His. His are ever kept fresh with tears of gratitude.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 60

Love , Tear , Heart , Gratitude

“Toil, says the proverb, is the sire of fame.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Licymnius, Frag. 477

“This was no doubt due in part to economic reasons, for Scotland before the era of modern industrial developments was a poor country and brains and brawn were among its few merchantable assets. Hence, on the one hand, the rewarding eminence attained by so many Scots beyond their own borders in the worlds of scholarship, commerce, and administration… and hence, on the other hand, the fame of the achievements of the Scots on the Continent as soldiers of fortune in the wars of Europe, a valorous reputation subsequently so well maintained by the Highland Regiments in the service of the British Crown.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), On Education, p. 14

War , World , Parting , Country

“And one false step entirely damns her fame.
In vain with tears the loss she may deplore,
In vain look back on what she was before;
She sets like stars that fall, to rise no more.”

Nicholas Rowe (1674–1718) English poet, dramatist

Jane Shore (1714), Act I.

Star , Tear , Loss , Falseness

“The fame of the advantages which accrue to the inhabitants of our country has spread throughout the world. If we doubt the high estimation in which these opportunities are held by other peoples, it is only necessary to remember that they sought them in such numbers as to require our own protection by restrictive immigration. I am aware that our country and its institutions are often the subject of censure. I grieve to see them misrepresented for selfish and destructive aims. But I welcome candid criticism, which is moved by a purpose to promote the public welfare. But while we should always strive for improvement by living in more complete harmony with out ideals, we should not permit incidental failure or unwarranted blame to obscure the fact that the people of our country have secured the greatest success that was ever before experienced in human history.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

People , World , History , Failure

“Fame to be sweet must resound in the ears of those we love, in the atmosphere of the land that will guard our ashes. Fame should hover over our tomb to warm with its heat the chill of death, so that we may not be completely reduced to nothingness, that something of us may survive.”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

Noli me Tangere

Love , Death

“It was a day of blackest deed
When Delhi streets of fame
Did glitter well by cursed greed
Of harsh Timoor the lame.”

Kuvempu (1904–1994) Kannada novelist, poet, playwright, critic, and thinker

From Kuvempu’s writings in English on the historical subject of Timoor’s invasion of India. Quoted here. Poet, nature lover and humanist, 24 November 2013, Archive Organization http://web.archive.org/web/20060318053230/http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/apr252004/sh1.asp,

“What rage for fame attends both great and small!
Better be damned than mentioned not at all.”

John Wolcot (1738–1819) English satirist

To the Royal Academicians; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Rage

“I heard Senator Sam Irvin of Watergate fame say something that stayed with me: 'If you can paint a really good picture of a cow, you don't have to write the word "cow" under it.'”

Fred Thompson (1942–2015) American politician and actor

Teaching the Pig to Dance

Painting

“Fame factories develop and promote hip icons who exude superior airs.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

State of the Art (2000)

“Sensual passions are your first enemy.
Your second is called Discontent.
Your third is Hunger & Thirst.
Your fourth is called Craving.
Fifth is Sloth & Drowsiness.
Sixth is called Terror.
Your seventh is Uncertainty.
Hypocrisy & Stubbornness, your eighth.
Gains, Offerings, Fame, & Status wrongly gained,
and whoever would praise self
& disparage others.
That, Namuci, is your enemy,
the Dark One's commando force.
A coward can't defeat it,
but one having defeated it
gains bliss.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Khuddaka Nikaya (Minor Collection), (Suttas falling down), Sutta 3.2. Padhana Sutta

Hunger , Passion

“(Continued) The ironic thing is that my original goal in life was to be in a famous band, tour the world and sell millions of albums. Although that didn't quite happen, I got something else just as gratifying. Instead of being in a famous band, I gained some fame in the industry as a game composer. Instead of touring the world, I receive fan mail from around the world. Instead of selling millions of albums, my music is on millions of games! And I sell enough of my own albums that allows me to keep releasing them. So in a different way, I kind of got what I wanted after all. And I'm more than happy with that. The most fulfilling part of it is that I feel I contributed something that mattered to a significant number of people, and more importantly, I got to be a part of projects that mattered a lot to my life personally, like Star Wars!”

Frank Klepacki (1974) American musician, video game music composer and sound director

Gameplay magazine

Life , War , People , World

“Fame is almost a poison. I couldn’t care less, in fact I lived better when I was a nobody.”

Bode Miller (1977) American alpine ski racer

Interview with Gazzetta dello Sport, 16 Feb. 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11385083/

“I found myself at the top of the the ladder, with everything, but with one thing missing: that one thing was a companion. Because, it's cliché to say, but nothing really means anything in the end unless you're really doing what you want to do, and… I walked off a huge world tour, with a yacht and television specials, and record deals, and film deals. I walked away and my whole thing collapsed. I shocked my business world and walked back to my cottage, which I had been renting to two American girls. One of them was Cynthia, and I stayed with her for two days, then her friend Lori came back from Clapton's house, where there had been a party going on for almost a week. Lori came in with another friend, and it was Linda, my Sunshine Supergirl from 1965 whom I'd written all my songs for. We hadn't married then, because she had a child with Brian Jones and wasn't ready for another relationship. And it was good that we didn't marry back then, because my four years of '60's fame would have wrecked the marriage. But we met again, and I went away from fame and into the arms of my muse, my lover, and then my wife, and then the mother of my children.”

Donovan (1946) Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist

Grip interview (1997)

Marriage , Children , World , Girl

“It is regrettable that some Tibetan officials, who lack the wisdom and competence required for promoting basic human happiness and the short and long term welfare of their own people, indulge in flattering Chinese officials and, collaborate with these Chinese officials who know nothing about Tibetans and work simply for their temporary fame indulging in fabricating impressive reports. In reality, the Tibetan people have not only undergone immeasurable sufferings, but large numbers have also unnecessarily lost their lives.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Letter to Deng Xiaoping (1981)

Wisdom , People , Reality , Suffering

“Remember that the term Rational was intended to signify a discriminating attention to every several thing and freedom from negligence; and that Equanimity is the voluntary acceptance of things which are assigned to thee by the common nature; and the Magnanimity is the elevation of the intelligent part above the pleasurable or painful sensations of the flesh, and above that poor thing called fame, and death, and all such things. If then, thou maintainest thyself in the possession of these names, without desiring to be called by these names by others, thou wilt be another person and wilt enter into another life.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

X, 8
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book X

Life , Death , Pain , Pleasure

“Fame, (fame) makes a man take things over
Fame, (fame) lets him loose, hard to swallow
Fame, (fame) puts you there where things are hollow
Fame (fame)Fame, it's not your brain, it's just the flame
That burns your change to keep you insane”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

sane
Fame, written with Carlos Alomar and John Lennon
Song lyrics, Young Americans (1975)

Change

“The crown and glory of life is Character. It is the noblest possession of a man, constituting a rank in itself, and an estate in the general goodwill; dignifying every station, and exalting every position in society. It exercises a greater power than wealth, and secures all the honour without the jealousies of fame. It carries with it an influence which always tells; for it is the result of proved honour, rectitude, and consistency — qualities which, perhaps more than any other, command the general confidence and respect of mankind.”

Samuel Smiles (1812–1904) Scottish author

Source: Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859), Ch. XIII : Character — The True Gentleman

Life , Jealousy , Exercises , Confidence

“A businessman who reads Business Week is lost to fame. One who reads Proust is marked for greatness.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Affluent Society

Source: The Affluent Society (1958), Chapter 13, Section V, p. 155

Business , Reading

“Mark how my fame rings out from zone to zone:
A thousand critics shouting: "He's unknown!"”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Couplet

“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.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

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

“A dangerous tendency has shown itself of late among many of our personnel -- an unwillingness to share weal and woe with the masses, a concern for personal fame and gain. This is very bad. One way of overcoming it is to streamline our organizations in the course of our campaign to increase production and practice economy, and to transfer cadres to lower levels so that a considerable number will return to productive work. We must see to it that all our cadres and all our people constantly bear in mind that ours is a large socialist country but an economically backward and poor one, and that this is a very big contradiction. To make China prosperous and strong needs several decades of hard struggle, which means, among other things, pursuing the policy of building up our country through diligence and thrift, that is, practicing strict economy and fighting waste.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Original: (zh-CN) 在我们的许多工作人员中间，现在滋长着一种不愿意和群众同甘苦，喜欢计较个人名利的危险倾向，这是很不好的。我们在增产节约运动中要求精简机关，下放干部，使相当大的一批干部回到生产中去，就是克服这种危险倾向的一个方法。要使全体干部和全体人民经常想到我国是一个社会主义的大国，但又是一个经济落后的穷国，这是一个很大的矛盾。要使我国富强起来，需要几十年艰苦奋斗的时间，其中包括执行厉行节约、反对浪费这样一个勤俭建国的方针。

People , Way , Strong , Fight

“Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Book I, Ch. 39
Attributed

“Choose respect over fame every time. Fame is just attention. Respect is an attribute of love.”

Lupe Fiasco (1982) rapper

Rules 2 Rule

Love , Time

“I find that I would like now, best of all, to be a good conversationalist. I know I'm not one at present. Oh, I can sit and talk a little of this and that, but I realize that I haven't any definite or profound knowledge. I won't be satisfied with just a patter, a surface glaze of information. I don't want short-cuts to learning. I want to know all about the thing I study.
I'd like to be able to hold my own, to meet on a common ground, with scientists, inventors, clerics, doctors, athletes, authors.
The most worthwhile thing in life is to store your mind with knowledge.
I wish now that I had been able to go to college, if only so that I might have had appreciations earlier in the game.
People often say to me now that I have my home, my career, fame (if you call it that), there must be nothing left for me to live for. But there is everything left to live for. All the things I don't know about, all the things I want to know about.
Pictures, I've discovered, were practically all I did know about up to very recently. I've had to work so hard, to concentrate so closely, that I never have had time to read or to travel or to think about other things. I'm just at the beginning of living…”

Harold Lloyd (1893–1971) American film actor and producer

"Discoveries About Myself". Motion Picture, October 1930, pg. 58 & 90. (Brewster Publications). https://archive.org/stream/motionpicture1923040chic#page/n563/mode/2up https://archive.org/stream/motionpicture1923040chic#page/n595/mode/2up

Life , People , Travel , Home

“As an actor in Iceland, I found good training and colleagues in the National Theatre, and none of us could have predicted the kind of fame that LazyTown found globally. When you are an actor or do anything in the arts for a career, your life will take many unexpected twists and turns.Robbie was a product of many years of thinking and doing. What you see in the TV show is different from his first personality. One of the big challenges playing a part like Robbie is bringing the right kind of energy. You don't want to scare the littlest viewers but you have to bring a certain villain personality with humor.As many actors have said before me, being famous or well known can be nice or it can be a burden, it all depends on how you look at it. I love my fans - they have come along on this ride with me and have said too many nice things for me to ever count. I am grateful.There is no difference in preparing for Robbie Rotten or any classical serious role…. Every part you prepare for you have to be honest and truthful and wholly believe that the character exists – otherwise no one will accept your acting. Kids are a demanding audience and they KNOW when something is untruthful.”

Stefán Karl Stefánsson (1975–2018) Icelandic actor

Reddit AMA https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/57bkxj/i_am_stefan_karl_robbie_rotten_from_lazytown_and/ (13 October 2016)

Love , Life , Truth , Art

“Fame is like a shaved pig with a greased tail, and it is only after it has slipped through the hands of some thousands, that some fellow, by mere chance, holds on to it!”

Davy Crockett (1786–1836) American politician

This is from Pickings from the Porfolio of the Reporter of the New Orleans "Picayune" (1846) by Dennis Corcoran; it seems to have become attributed to Crockett in The Dictionary of Biographical Quotation of British and American Subjects (1978) by Richard Kenin and Justin Wintle, p. 206
Misattributed

Chance

“Who says that we shall pass, or the fame of us fade and die,
While the living stars fulfil their round in the living sky?”

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

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, III

Star

“You call me Mr. Pitiful;
Baby that's my name now, oh.
They call me Mr. Pitiful;
That's how I got my fame.
But people just don`t understand, now
What makes a man feel so blue, now
Ooh, they call me Mr. Pitiful;
Cause I lost someone just like you, now.”

Otis Redding (1941–1967) American singer, songwriter and record producer

Mr. Pitiful, co-written with Steve Cropper.
Song lyrics, The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads (1965)

People , Feeling , Understanding , Baby

“There's a point you reach before you're perverted and tainted by all the things that drag you into the music business, like avarice or a lust for fame. The original reason why I started was some feeling of community, equality, wanting to fight for things you believe in. Any kid who's gone to a state school knows what it's all about - bullying, racism. And you've just got to make a stand.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

2004, The Socialist Review; on why it was important to do the Love Music, Hate Racism gig
Music and politics

School , Music , Feeling , Communication

“Who to patch up his fame, or fill his purse,
Still pilfers wretched plans, and makes them worse;
Like gypsies, lest the stolen brat be known,
Defacing first, then claiming for his own.”

Charles Churchill (satirist) (1731–1764) British poet

Apology addressed to the Critical Reviewers (1761), line 232, comparable with: "Steal! to be sure they may; and, egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children,—disguise them to make 'em pass for their own", Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Critic, act i. sc. i

“My name is Odd Thomas, though in this age when fame is the altar at which most people worship, I am not sure why you should care who I am or that I exist.”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas (2003), Chapter 1; Odd Thomas's introduction

People , Age

“The most incurably frustrated—and, therefore, the most vehement—among the permanent misfits are those with an unfulfilled craving for creative work. Both those who try to write, paint, compose, etcetera, and fail decisively, and those who after tasting the elation of creativeness feel a drying up of the creative flow within and know that never again will they produce aught worthwhile, are alike in the grip of a desperate passion. Neither fame nor power nor riches nor even monumental achievements in other fields can still their hunger. Even the wholehearted dedication to a holy cause does not always cure them. Their unappeased hunger persists, and they are likely to become the most violent extremists in the service of their holy cause.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 37, Ch.6 Misfits
The True Believer (1951), Part Two: The Potential Converts

Hunger , Feeling , Decision , Passion

“Fame then was cheap, and the first comer sped;
And they have kept it since by being dead.”

John Dryden The Conquest of Granada

Epilogue.
The Conquest of Granada (1669-1670)

Dead

“Men of Harlech! On to glory,
See your banner, famed in story,
Waves these burning words before ye,
"Britain scorns to yield!"”

Thomas Oliphant

Song Men of Harlech

Men

“The hardest things in the world are being unique and having your life be a story. In the old days, it was much easier, but our modern fame-driven culture, with its real-time 24-7 marinade of electronic information, demands a lot from modern citizens, and poses great obstacles to narrative.”

Douglas Coupland book Generation A

Generation A (2009)

Life , World , Time

“One falls in love through fame.”

Francesco Petrarca Il Canzoniere

Canzone 53, st. 8
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life

Love

“Probably no man living has done longer or more valuable service for the cause of Islamic revival than Maulana Muhammad Ali of Lahore. His literary works, with those of the late Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, have given fame and distinction to the Ahmadiyya Movement.”

Muhammad Ali (writer) (1874–1951) Pakistani scholar and leading figure of the Ahmadiyya Movement

Marmaduke Pickthall, Islamic Culture, quarterly review published from Hyderabad Deccan, India, October 1936, pp. 659–660
About

“Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth.
And Melancholy marked him for her own.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

The Epitaph, St. 1
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=elcc (written 1750, publ. 1751)

Youth , Birth , Science

“Ah, dearer than my soul…
Dearer than light, or life, or fame.”

John Oldham (poet) (1653–1683) English satirical poet and translator

Lament for Saul and Jonathan; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).

Life , Soul , Light

“All anyone’s got is theories, usually distorted by what they’ve been through or what they want. This book, for example, was written by someone from a suburban, broken home, raised in Thatcher’s Britain, where inclusive ideas and family values were dismantled. A culture in which fame and celebrity became deified and drug use among the young extremely prevalent. Where modern manifestations of tribal identity like trade unions or guilds became redundant, manufacturing industries disappeared, neoliberalism emerged, and the welfare state was all but abolished. You could probably predict the contents of this book by looking at my weekly shopping receipt from Tesco’s. Alright, Waitrose. I’m dying to paint myself as a lowborn, Wat Tyler, Essex messiah; fortunately, I’m not quite that mad. I know that that heroic myth is part of my programming. That I’m quite a funny, normal bloke, that there’s a bit of bad in the best of us and a bit of good in the worst of us, that any centralized power structure with an egocentric figure at its helm will become corrupt.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Books , Family , Home , Idea

“Only a dad with a tired face,
Coming home from the daily race,
Bringing little of gold or fame
To show how well he has played the game;
But glad in his heart that his own rejoice
To see him come and to hear his voice.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Only a Dad, stanza 1, p. 43.
A Heap o' Livin' (1916)

Home , Game , Heart

“And say, has fame so dear, so dazzling charms?
Must brutal fierceness and the trade of arms,
Conquest, and laurels dipped in blood, be prized,
While life is scorned, and all its joys despised?”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Stanza 99 (tr. William Julius Mickle)-->
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto IV

Life , Joy

“I'm afraid that I got put off by the kings, queens, christs, disciples, priests, and priestesses who seemed to parade through the psyches of my contemporaries; and by the reincarnational data given by many psychics. It seems that almost everyone has a distinguished reincarnational family tree, blooming with famous historic personages. I've often thought that these purported past lives of fame and grandeur represent more heroic portions of the psyche, buried beneath prosaic life; I was willing to admit their value in reminding a contemporary personality of its own greater abilities and potentials.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book (1976), p. 51

Life , Family , Tree , Past

“{Fame has] given me a lot of free love -- and that's the best thing fame can afford you. What has it taken away? My privacy.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

"Billboard Magazine" (11 October 2003)
2007, 2008

Love

“As for life, it is a battle and a sojourning in a strange land; but the fame that comes after is oblivion.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

II, 17
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book II

Life

“Those who have the greatest and most positive impact on society are not concerned with name and fame.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

“I appreciate very much your generous invitation to be here tonight. You bear heavy responsibilities these days and an article I read some time ago reminded me of how particularly heavily the burdens of present day events bear upon your profession. You may remember that in 1851 the New York Herald Tribune under the sponsorship and publishing of Horace Greeley, employed as its London correspondent an obscure journalist by the name of Karl Marx.
We are told that foreign correspondent Marx, stone broke, and with a family ill and undernourished, constantly appealed to Greeley and managing editor Charles Dana for an increase in his munificent salary of $5 per installment, a salary which he and Engels ungratefully labeled as the "lousiest petty bourgeois cheating."
But when all his financial appeals were refused, Marx looked around for other means of livelihood and fame, eventually terminating his relationship with the Tribune and devoting his talents full time to the cause that would bequeath the world the seeds of Leninism, Stalinism, revolution and the cold war.
If only this capitalistic New York newspaper had treated him more kindly; if only Marx had remained a foreign correspondent, history might have been different. And I hope all publishers will bear this lesson in mind the next time they receive a poverty-stricken appeal for a small increase in the expense account from an obscure newspaper man.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, Address to ANPA

War , World , Family , Hope

“I will not seek the battle-field —
The men I there should meet,
What have they done to me to make
Shedding their life-blood sweet?
It is the veriest madness man
In maddest mood can frame,
To feed the earth with human gore,
And then to call it fame.
I have been wrong'd; but were my wrong
The deadliest wrong ere done,
I would not slay my enemy,
But bid him still live on :—
And I should deem my vengeance more
Than the death-wound in strife—
What ills can death inflict like those
Heap'd on each hour of life?”

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

19th August 1826) Metrical Fragments - No. 1 (under the pen name Iole
The London Literary Gazette, 1826

Life , Death , Men , Mood

“The idea that voting is pointless, democracy a façade, and that no one is representing ordinary people is more resonant than ever as I leave my ordinary town behind. Amidst the guilt and anger I feel in the back of the Führer-mobile, there is hope. Whilst it’s clear that on an individual, communal, and global level that radical change is necessary, I feel a powerful, transcendent optimism. I know change is possible, I know there is an alternative, because I live a completely different life to the one I was born with. I also know that the solution is not fame or money or any transient adornment of the individual. The only Revolution that can really change the world is the one in your own consciousness, and mine has already begun.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Life , Money , People , World

“From the fame opinion of a soul distinct from the body came the practice of praying, first for the dead, and then to them with a long train of other absurd opinions, and superstitious practices.”

Joseph Priestley book An History of the Corruptions of Christianity

General Conclusions, Part I : Containing Considerations addressed to Unbelievers and especially to Mr. Gibbon
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782)

Soul , Training , Dead

“Luther's Qualifications. Luther had a rare combination of gifts for a Bible translator: familiarity with the original languages, perfect mastery over the vernacular, faith in the revealed word of God, enthusiasm for the gospel, unction of the Holy Spirit. A good translation must be both true and free, faithful and idiomatic, so as to read like an original work. This is the case with Luther's version. Besides, he had already acquired such fame and authority that his version at once commanded universal attention.
His knowledge of Greek and Hebrew was only moderate, but sufficient to enable him to form an independent judgment. What he lacked in scholarship was supplied by his intuitive genius and the help of Melanchthon. In the German tongue he had no rival. He created, as it were, or gave shape and form to the modern High German. He combined the official language of the government with that of the common people. He listened, as he says, to the speech of the mother at home, the children in the street, the men and women in the market, the butcher and various tradesmen in their shops, and, "looked them on the mouth," in pursuit of the most intelligible terms. His genius for poetry and music enabled him to reproduce the rhythm and melody, the parallelism and symmetry, of Hebrew poetry and prose. His crowning qualification was his intuitive insight and spiritual sympathy with the contents of the Bible.
A good translation, he says, requires "a truly devout, faithful, diligent, Christian, learned, experienced, and practiced heart."”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

Luther's competence as a Bible translator

Women , Men , God , Children

“I'm sorry, Jeff, I'm a little taken back right now. I mean, this is… this… this is what it comes to? People actually cheering because you haven't failed a drug test in a year? This is not an accomplishment! Maybe it's an accomplishment to you, Jeff, so congratulations. You haven't failed a drug test in three hundred and sixty-five days. You can start writing your Hall of Fame speech right now.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

Beginning a lecture criticizing Jeff Hardy on being proud of the fact that he hasn't failed a drug test in over a year, despite the fact that he'd already failed two beforehand and would've been fired if he'd failed a third one. July 17, 2009.
Friday Night SmackDown

People

“Not greatly gifted, not deeply beautiful, Madonna tells America that fame comes from wanting it badly enough. And everyone is terribly good at badly wanting things.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"Madonna" (1992)
Visiting Mrs. Nabokov and Other Excursions (1993)

Beauty

“My convictions, positive and negative, on all the matters of which you speak, are of long and slow growth and are firmly rooted. But the great blow which fell on me seemed to stir them to their foundation, and had I lived a couple of centuries earlier I could have fancied a devil scoffing at me and them — and asking me what profit it was to have stripped myself of the hopes and consolations of the mass of mankind? To which my only reply was and is — Oh devil! Truth is better than much profit. I have searched over the grounds of my belief, and if wife and child and name and fame were all to be lost to me one after the other as the penalty, still I will not lie.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1860s, Reply to Charles Kingsley (1860)

Truth , Lie , Penalty , Hope

“Fame without the money to insulate you from it is one of the most wretched human conditions possible.”

Douglas Coupland book Generation A

Source: Generation A (2009), p. 80

Money

“Son of my son," begun the king, "O Oscar, pride of youth! I saw the shining of thy sword, I gloried in my race. Pursue the fame of our fathers; be thou what they have been, when Trenmor lived, the first of men, and Trathal the father of heroes! They fought the battle in their youth. They are the song of bards. O Oscar! bend the strong in arm: but spare the feeble hand. Be thou a stream of many tides against the foes of thy people; but like the gale, that moves the grass, to those who ask thine aid. So Trenmor lived; such Trathal was; and such has Fingal been. My arm was the support of the injured; the weak rested behind the lightning of my steel.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

Book III. Compare: Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos. ("Spare the conquered, battle down the proud.") Virgil, Aeneid (19 BC), Book VI, line 853 (tr. Robert Fitzgerald).
The Poems of Ossian, Fingal, an ancient Epic Poem

Men , People , Youth , Support

“How am I to obtain a very superior son who shall achieve world-wide fame?”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Pandu
After this, the Kuru king Pandu, taking counsel with the great Rishis commanded Kunti to observe an auspicious vow for one full year.
The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXXIII

World

“Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity, who drink of that flood of glory as of a river, and refresh our wings in it for future flight.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

No. 389
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

Drink , Future , Dead

“Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good fame,
Plans, credit, and the muse;
Nothing refuse.”

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

Give All to Love http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/give_all_to_love.htm, st. 1
1840s, Poems (1847)

Love , Heart

“The Bards also, who by the praises of their verse transmit to distant ages the fame of heroes slain in battle, poured forth at ease their lays in abundance.”
Vos quoque qui fortes animas, belloque peremptas Laudibus in longum vates dimittitis aevum, Plurima securi fudistis carmina, Bardi.

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus book Pharsalia

Book I, line 447 (tr. J. D. Duff).
Pharsalia

Age , Distant

“A man must love a thing very much if he not only practices it without any hope of fame and money, but even practices it without any hope of doing it well.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

As quoted in Mackay's The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, A Selection of Scientific Quotations (1977), p. 34

Love , Money , Hope

“Traditionally there's this barrier between the people who make movies and the people who watch them, and I think it sucks. Making Hollywood this castle on a hill and crowning actors the "Stars" might have been exciting and even brought people together last century, but now it's grown kind of disgusting in its excesses and it's no longer bringing people together—it's keeping people apart. It always turns my stomach a little when, because I'm in movies and on TV, people sometimes treat me as if I'm somehow different from, even above, a normal person. But the emails, posts, and comments I've been trading recently with people through those aforementioned sites cause me no nausea; they inspire me. There's no nasty status predicated on "Fame" or "Fortune."”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (1981) American actor, director, producer, and writer

There's just that beautiful thing, the point of all art in the first place: a connection between one individual and another.
April 6, 2006 http://hitrecord.org/Journal-2006-04-06.html

People , Beauty , Art , Star

“My purpose in writing these essays has been to acquaint men who are interested in the bearings of modern history on public life with sundry statesmen whose time was devoted not to seeking office or to winning a brief popular fame by chicanery or pettifoggery, but to serving the great interests of modern states and, indeed, of universal humanity. I would present these statesmen and their work as especially worthy to be studied by those who aspire to serve their country in any way.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. ix

Life , Men , Way , History

“My aim? Simply to inspire people and give them the most complete freedom to live their own life. No glamour, no fame, no institution - nothing. To live simply and die luminously.”

Anirvan (1896–1978) Indian Hindu philosopher

Inner yoga (antaryoga): Anirvan. (1988). New Delhi: Voice of India. From the Introduction by Ram Swarup.

Life , People , Freedom

“For the fame of riches and beauty is fickle and frail, while virtue is eternally excellent.”
Nam divitiarum et formae gloria fluxa atque fragilis est, virtus clara aeternaque habetur.

Sallust (-86–-34 BC) Roman historian, politician

For the glory of wealth and beauty is fleeting and perishable; that of the mind is illustrious and immortal.
Source: Bellum Catilinae (c. 44 BC), Chapter I; Variant translation:

Beauty

“Reporter: The “Protocols” trial is on today. I’ve been assigned to report on it for my paper.
Reporter 2: What’s your hurry Carl? The Jewish community’s lawyer is trying to show the damage done by the “Protocols of Zion” book.
Lawyer: Your honor, we have demonstrated that the “Protocols” is ‘’’smut…’’’ I would conclude by exhibiting evidence of its influence on public opinion as a fraud.
Judge: You may proceed!
Lawyer: Since its first publication in Russia by Dr. Nilus in 1905, four printings have been distributed there!
In 1919, type script copies were distributed to delegated at the Versailles peace conference by white Russians.
In England Victor Marsden translated the “protocols” into English in 1922.
In 1920, the first polish language edition was brought into the United States and South America by Polish immigrants.
In 1921, the first Arabic and the first Italian copies appeared!
In 1921, “The Times” of London published its famous expose of this false document!
And because of his fame, Henry Ford’s work deserves recounting.
Lawyer: In 1920, Henry ford the American auto magnate, bought a small newspaper, the “Dearborn Independent.” He began a series, “The International Jew,” made up of borrowings from the “Protocols of the Elders on Zion.”
Later, in 1922, it was published in sxteen language for a world-wide distribution. It sold over a ‘’’half million’’’ copies in America alone!
Reporter: Actually, Ford recanted in 1926 when he was threatened with a libel suit.

Reporter 2: Really?
Reporter 3: What did he say?
Reporter: He said in part, “…To my great regret I learn that in the ‘Dearborn Independent’ there appeared articles which induced the Jews to regard me as their enemy promoting anti-Semitism!”
HE WENT ON TO SAY, “…I am…mortified that this Journal…is giving currency to ‘The Protocols of the wise men of Zion,’ which I learn to be gross forgeries…I deem it my duty…to make amends for the wrong done to the Jews as fellow men and brothers by asking their forgiveness.
HE GOES ON BY RECITING SOME OF THE MORE “evil ingredients” in the “Protocols” AND HE REFERS TO IT AS AN “infamous forgery.”
Reporter 3: DID HIS APOLOGY CHANGE ANYTHING?? HENRY FORD WAS FAMOUS the world over…his apology must have had influence!
Reporter: Not very much. In fact publication increased all over the globe.
Reporter 3: Look! Here I have two French translations of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” that were published in ‘’’France,’’’ dated 1934. Later they had many printings!
Judge: …I hope to see the day when nobody will be able to understand why otherwise sane and reasonable men should torment their brains for fourteen days over the authenticity or fabrication of the “Protocols of Zion”’’’…I regard the “protocols” as ridiculous nonsense!
Reporter: Good news! …judge Meyer found against the Nazis and imposed a fine on them…

Publisher: We will publish the judge’s decision!
Reporter: This should put an end to the “Protocols” at last!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 102-107

Men , Books , World , Peace

“Though a hundred crooked paths may conduct to a temporary success, the one plain and straight path of public and private virtue can alone lead to a pure and lasting fame and the blessings of posterity.”

Edward Everett (1794–1865) American politician, orator, statesman

Edward Everett, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 352.

Success

“My Pandolfo, those works are frail in the long run, but our study is the one that makes men immortal through fame.”

Francesco Petrarca Il Canzoniere

Pandolfo mio, quest'opere son frali
da ll lungo andar, ma 'l nostro studio è quello
dche fa per fama gli uomini immortali.
Canzone 104, st. 4
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life

Men , Study

“Richard Burton is now my epitaph, my cross, my title, my image. I have achieved a kind of diabolical fame. It has nothing to do with my talents as an actor. That counts for little now. I am the diabolically famous Richard Burton.”

Richard Burton (1925–1984) Welsh actor

Interview in 1963 quoted In Robert Andrews The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations http://books.google.com/books?id=VK0vR4fsaigC&pg=PT250, Penguin UK, 30 October 2003, p. 259

“I love acting. Oh, God, I love it. But all this fame and all this bullshit attention. I'm not supernatural. I've done nothing extremely special to deserve the position. It happens every couple of years, and it's happened to hundreds of people before me.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

As quoted in Newsweek, July 10, 2000.

Love , God , People

“People afraid of criticism but I always put myself in a sacrificial position, they been know I ain't just rappin for fame”

Nas (1973) American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur

N.I.G.G.E.R. (The Slave And The Master)
On Albums, Untitled (2008)

People

“"Leaves, some the wind scatters on the ground—So is the race of man." Leaves, also, are thy children; and leaves, too, are they who cry out so if they are worthy of credit, or bestow their praise, or on the contrary curse, or secretly blame and sneer; and leaves, in like manner, are those who shall receive and transmit a man's fame to after-times. For all such things as these "are produced in the season of spring," as the poet says; then the wind casts them down; then the forest produces other leaves in their places. But a brief existence is common to all things, and yet thou avoidest and pursuest all things as if they would be eternal.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

X, 34
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book X

Children , Spring , Time , Cry

“Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

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

“A man must love a thing very much if he not only practices it without any hope of fame and money, but even practices it without any hope of doing it well.”

Oliver Herford (1863–1935) American writer

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, as per Mackay's The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, A Selection of Scientific Quotations (1977), p. 34.
Misattributed

Love , Money , Hope

“It would be another two decades before I came upon the words that made me think I had a story to tell—the opening words of Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: “You must not tell anyone,” my mother said, “what I am about to tell you.” The immigrant mother’s prohibition to her daughter reminded me of my own mother’s warning about spreading “family secrets.” In the face of California’s fame for blatancy—in the face of pervasive light, ingenuousness, glass-and-aluminum housing, bikinis, billboards—Mrs. Hong recommended concealment.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

Secret , Family , Thinking , Light

“Music, for me, is a love bewitched. / Fame as a painter? / Writer, modern poet? Bad joke. / So I have no calling, and loaf.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1899), # 67, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1895 - 1902

Love , Music

“The King of Wu said，"Enough, general. Retire to your hostel, We do not wish to come down and observe." Sun Tzu said, "The king only loves the words, he cannot make use of the reality." After this, Ho-lu knew that Sun Tzu could command troops and in the end appointed him commander. [Later when Wu] defeated mighty Ch’u to its west and entered its capital Ying awed Ch'i and Chin to its north and spread its fame among the feudal lords, it was due in part to Sun Tzu.”

Sima Qian book Records of the Grand Historian

translated by Tsai-fa Cheng, Zongli Lu, William H. Nienhauser, Jr., and Robert Reynolds, in The Grand Scribe’s Records, edited by William H. Nienhauser, Jr.
孫子吳起列傳 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%8F%B2%E8%A8%98/%E5%8D%B7065
Records of the Grand Historian

Love , Reality , Sun , Parting

“I was born in the Realms of Etiquette;
In early years, unprotected and poor.
Alone, I learnt to distinguish between Evil and Good;
Untutored, I toiled at bitter tasks.
The World's Law honours Learning and Fame;
Scholars prize marriages and Caps.
With these fetters I gyved my own hands;
Truly I became a much-deceived man.
At ten years old I learnt to read books;
At fifteen, I knew how to write prose.
At twenty I was made a Bachelor of Arts;
At thirty I became a Censor at the Court.
Above, the duty I owe to Prince and parents;
Below, the ties that bind me to wife and child.
The support of my family, the service of my country—
For these tasks my nature is not apt.”

Bai Juyi (772–846) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"Chu Ch'ēn Village" (A.D. 811)
Arthur Waley's translations

Marriage , Books , World , Family

Quotes about fame page 3

Quotes about fame
page 3