Quotes about fame
page 5

“Fame, which is the opinion the World expresses of any Man's excellent Endowments, is the Idol to which the finest spirits have, in all Ages, burnt their Incense.”

Richard Blackmore (1654–1729) English poet and physician

"An Essay upon False Vertue", p. 262
Essays Upon Several Subjects (1716)

Age, World

“Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled,
On Fames eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 2, stanza 32
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book IV

“I was about to say, 'Avoid fame like the plague,' but you know, they can cure the plague with penicillin these days.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199709242015.NAA10312@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“Don't come into the music industry. It's almost inevitable that you'll psychologically be quite screwed up. Fame isn't a natural, human, behavioural thing. You get alienated. You're not really surrounded by truth.”

Katie Melua (1984) British singer-songwriter

[Bernard Perusse, A private path to fame, http://www.canada.com/cityguides/montreal/story.html?id=cb6fe4fc-01ef-4d0b-ad86-7ad091135e1b, The Gazette, canada.com, 2008-06-26]

Truth, Music, Nature

“Something rather frightening takes place, namely a self-fulfilling fame that's come up only in the past decade or so, that does not need to base itself in adaptive skill, or any skill for that matter. All it needs is the fuel of more celebrity, and thus more prestige, and thus more celebrity, and so on ad infinitum.”

Jack Gleeson (1992) Irish actor

Speech at Oxford Union (2014)

Past

“During the same broadcast, Blyleven asked guest Ace Young (of American Idol fame) if he "got lucky" with show host Paula Abdul.”

Bert Blyleven (1951) Major League Baseball player and broadcaster

“The invention of printing did away with anonymity, fostering ideas of literary fame and the habit of considering intellectual effort as private property.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Medium is the Message (1967), p. 122

Idea, Effort

“They feel fame gives them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you, of any kind of nature — and it won't hurt your feelings — like it's happening to your clothes not you.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Comment on fame, quoted in Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress (1993) by Carl E. Rollyson, and in Symbolic Leaders: Public Dramas and Public Men (2006) by Orrin Edgar Klapp
Variant: People feel fame gives them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you, of any kind of nature — and it won't hurt your feelings — like it's happening to your clothing.
As quoted in Ms. magazine (August 1972) p. 40
Context: When you're famous you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way. It stirs up envy, fame does. People you run into feel that, well, who does she think she is, Marilyn Monroe? They feel fame gives them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you, of any kind of nature — and it won't hurt your feelings — like it's happening to your clothes not you.

Feeling, Nature, Hurt, Clothes

“I was asked the other day if I would be interested in the Nobel Prize, but I think that for me it would be an absolute catastrophe. I would certainly be interested in deserving it, but to receive it would be terrible. It would just complicate even more the problems of fame. The only thing I really regret in life is not having a daughter.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Source: The Paris Review interview (1981), p. 339

Life, Problem, Thinking, Daughters

“What a foolish thing it is to be governed by a desire for fame and profit and to fret away one's whole life without a moment of peace. Great wealth is no guarantee of security. Wealth, in fact, tends to attract calamities and disaster.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

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

Life, Peace, Wealth

“Soldiers! I have summoned you together for the last time. The vision we have cherished of a free and independent country, has vanished, and that country is now the spoil of a conqueror. I disband your organization in preference to surrendering it to our enemies. I am no longer your commander. After association of more than two eventful years, I part from you with a just pride, in the fame of your achievements, and grateful recollections of your generous kindness to myself. And now at this moment of bidding you a final adieu accept the assurance of my unchanging confidence and regard. Farewell. John S. Mosby, Col.”

John S. Mosby (1833–1916) Confederate Army officer

Letter to the Mosby's Rangers (April 1865), as quoted in Mosby's Rangers, Simon and Schuster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0671747452 (1991), Jeffry D. Wert, p. 289 Letter (1865)

Confidence, Time, Parting, Country

“As more and more women acquired prestige, fame, or money from by the ruling capitalist patriarchy.”

Bell Hooks book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

Source: Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory, p. 7.

Women, Money

“Make no mistake
She sheds her skin like a snake
On the dirty road to fame.”

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

"There She Goes (A Little Heartache)"
Lyrics and poetry

“Each has his destined time: a span
Is all the heritage of man:
'Tis virtue's part by deeds of praise
To lengthen fame through after days.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book X, p. 367

Time, Parting

“Both Abrams and Westmoreland would have been judged as authentic military "heroes" at a different time in history. Both men were outstanding leaders in their own right and in their own way. They offered sharply contrasting examples of military leadership, something akin to the distinct differences between Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant of our Civil War period. They entered the United States Military Academy at the same time in 1932- Westmoreland from a distinguished South Carolina family, and Abrams from a simpler family background in Massachusetts- and graduated together with the Class of 1936. Whereas Westmoreland became the First Captain (the senior cadet in the corps) during their senior year, Abrams was a somewhat nondescript cadet whose major claim to fame was as a loud, boisterous guard on the second-string varsity football squad. Both rose to high rank through outstanding performance in combat command jobs in World War II and the Korean War, as well as through equally commendable work in various staff positions. But as leaders they were vastly different. Abrams was the bold, flamboyant charger who wanted to cut to the heart of the matter quickly and decisively, while Westmoreland was the more shrewdly calculating, prudent commander who chose the more conservative course. Faultlessly attired, Westmoreland constantly worried about his public image and assiduously courted the press. Abrams, on the other hand, usually looked rumpled, as though he might have slept in his uniform, and was indifferent about his appearance, acting as though he could care less about the press. The sharply differing results were startling; Abrams rarely receiving a bad press report, Westmoreland struggling to get a favorable one.”

Bruce Palmer Jr. (1913–2000) United States Army Chief of Staff

Source: The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam (1984), p. 134

Men, War, World, Family

“In his recent book, 'Welcome to the Desert of the Real', famed Slovenian socialist intellectual Slavoj Zizek tackles the Palestinian question in a most unoriginal manner. What concerns him most is not the foundational racism of Zionism and its concrete offspring, a racist Jewish state, nor the racist curricula of Israeli Jewish schools, the racist Israeli Jewish media representations of Palestinians, the racist declarations of Israeli Jewish leaders on the right and on the left, or the Jewish supremacist rights and privileges guiding Zionism and Israeli state laws and policies -- all of which seem of little concern to him -- but rather Arab 'anti-Semitism' which should not be 'tolerated.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Arabs are in fact reacting to Zionist Jewish colonialism and its commitment to European white supremacy in Jewish guise.
Ibid.
"The legacy of Jean-Paul Sartre"

Books, School, Law, Question

“Dhoni has got ability of rising from ashes. It is his temperament where he has treated those two imposters- fame and failure- in just the same manner.”

MS Dhoni (1981) Indian cricket player

Sunil Gavaskar https://www.scoopwhoop.com/sports/dhoni-quotes/

Failure

“To this fine spirit our earth owes her greatest:
For the future is purchased by scorning the present,
And life is redeemed from its clay soil by fame.
* King, not a vestige remains of your palaces;
Conqueror, forgotten the fame of your battles:
But the Poet yet lives in the sweetness of music—
He appeal'd to the heart, that never forgets.”

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

The Three Brothers from The London Literary Gazette (20th June 1829) as Fame : An Apologue
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Life, Music, Future, Heart

“You have to work hard in the industry. I didn't come into the industry and into the business and to do what I do to become famous. But I knew in the back of my head that if fame came along with it, that was a blessing. I love when someone recognizes me or wants an autograph. But for me it was about working rather than being a "star."”

John Barrowman (1967) Scottish-American actor, singer, dancer, musical theatre performer, writer and television personality

Fern Britton Meets John Barrowman BBC (2012)

Love, Star, Business

“The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame
Over his living head like Heaven is bent,
An early but enduring monument,
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song
In sorrow.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. XXX
Adonais (1821)

“Fame's but a hollow echo; gold, pure clay;
Honour, the darling but of one short day,
Beauty—th' eye's idol—but a damasked skin;
State, but a golden prison to live in
And torture free-born minds.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

"A Farewell to the Vanities of the World" http://www.bartleby.com/331/467.html, lines 3–7. Author uncertain. Attributed to Henry Wotton and to Raleigh. Attributed

Beauty

“That's fame: just a cigar with the hot end and ash in your mouth.”

Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897) French novelist

C'est ça la gloire. Un bon cigare dans la bouche par le côté du feu et de la cendre.
L'immortel: mœurs parisiennes (1888; repr. Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1890) p. 56; Arthur Woollgar Verrall and Margaret de G. Verrall (trans.) One of the "Forty" (Chicago: Rand, McNally, 1920) p. 50.

“Let the famous not denounce fame. Far from being empty and meaningless, it fills those it touches with divine power.”

Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872) austrian dramatic and writer

Sappho, act 1, sc. 5 (1818).

“But You know, Landscape is my mistress — 't is to her that I look for fame — and all that the warmth of the imagination renders dear to Man.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Letter to his future wife, Maria Bicknell (22 September 1812), as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 23
1800s - 1810s

Imagination

“Majorities, as such, afford no guarantees for justice. They are men of the same nature as minorities. They have the same passions for fame, power, and money, as minorities; and are liable and likely to be equally — perhaps more than equally, because more boldly — rapacious, tyrannical and unprincipled, if intrusted with power. There is no more reason, then, why a man should either sustain, or submit to, the rule of the majority, than of a minority.”

Lysander Spooner book No Treason

No Treason (1867–1870), No. I

Men, Money, Justice, Nature

“You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, … back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame … back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time -- back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”

Thomas Wolfe book You Can't Go Home Again

Book VI, Ch. 44: The Way of No Return
You Can't Go Home Again (1940)

Family, Dreams, Home, Memory

“Tranquillity! thou better name
Than all the family of Fame.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Ode to Tranquillity
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Family

“And what is friendship but a name,
A charm that lulls to sleep,
A shade that follows wealth or fame,
And leaves the wretch to weep?”

Oliver Goldsmith book The Vicar of Wakefield

Source: The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Ch. 8, The Hermit (Edwin and Angelina), st. 19.

Friendship, Sleep, Wealth

“And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are!”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

L'Envoi, Stanza 3 (1896).
The Seven Seas (1896)

Money, God, Star, Joy

“On the disappearance of "rock star" hysteria surrounding him: I took it rather better than some of them I could tell you about, who had nervous breakdowns because they’re not the king any more. I found fame really annoying. Anything to do with ‘celebrity’, I just don’t get.”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

2015

Star

“Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorrèd shears,
And slits the thin-spun life.”

John Milton Lycidas

Source: Lycidas (1637), Line 64; comparable to: "Erant quibus appetentior famæ videretur, quando etiam sapientibus cupido gloriae novissima exuitur" (Translated: "Some might consider him as too fond of fame, for the desire of glory clings even to the best of men longer than any other passion"), Tacitus, Historiae, iv. 6; said of Helvidius Priscus.

Life, Hope, Home, Thinking

“Yet have we well begun,
Battles so bravely won
Have ever to the sun
By fame been raisëd.”

Michael Drayton (1563–1631) English poet

Source: To the Cambro-Britons and Their Harp, his Ballad of Agincourt (1627), Lines 29-32.

Sun

“Shah Alamgir, that high and mighty king,
Pride and renown of Gurgan Timur’s line,
In whom Islam attained a loftier fame
And wider honour graced the Prophet’s Law,
He the last arrow to our quiver left
In the affray of Faith with Unbelief;
When that the impious seed of heresy,
By Akbar nourished, sprang and sprouted fresh
In Dara’s soul, the candle of the heart
Was dimmed in every breast, no more secure
Against corruption our Community
Continued; then God chose from India
That humble-minded warrior, Alamgir,
Religion to revive, faith to renew.
The lightning of his sword set all ablaze
The harvest of impiety; faith’s torch
Once more its radiance o’er our counsels shed.”

Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement

The Secrets of Selflessness, Emperor Alamgir and the Tiger

God, Faith, Religion, Law

“Although the Protestant Church is accused of much disastrous bigotry, one claim to immortal fame must be granted it: by permitting freedom of inquiry in the Christian faith and by liberating the minds of men from the yoke of authority, it enabled freedom of inquiry in general to take root in Germany, and made it possible for science to develop independently. German philosophy, though it now puts itself on an equal basis with the Protestant Church or even above it, is nonetheless only its daughter; as such it always owes the mother a forbearing reverence.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Wenn man auch der protestantischen Kirche manche fatale Engsinnigkeit vorwirft, so muß man doch zu ihrem unsterblichen Ruhme bekennen: indem durch sie die freie Forschung in der christlichen Religion erlaubt und die Geister vom Joche der Autorität befreit wurden, hat die freie Forschung überhaupt in Deutschland Wurzel schlagen und die Wissenschaft sich selbständig entwickeln können. Die deutsche Philosophie, obgleich sie sich jetzt neben die protestantische Kirche stellt, ja sich über sie heben will, ist doch immer nur ihre Tochter; als solche ist sie immer in betreff der Mutter zu einer schonenden Pietät verpflichtet.
Source: The Romantic School (1836), p. 24

Men, Faith, Freedom, Science

“[Being peppered with invitations to travel far and wide to give lectures] has always seemed to me one of the stranger aspects of literary fame: you prove your competence as a writer and an inventor of stories, and then people clamour for you to make speeches and tell them what you think about the world.”

J.M. Coetzee (1940) South African writer

Dagens Nyheter http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/an-exclusive-interview-with-j-m-coetzee interview with David Attwell (December 8, 2003)

People, World, Travel, Thinking

“… The fame of Gibbon is highest among writers; those especially who have studied for years particular periods included in his theme (and how many those are; for in the East and West he has set his mark on all that is great for ten centuries!) acutely feel and admiringly observe how difficult it would be to say so much, and leave so little untouched; to compress so many telling points; to present in so few words so apt and embracing a narrative of the whole.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

[ART. I—Edward Gibbon, National Review, 2, January 1856, 1–42, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433081643169;view=1up;seq=43] (quote p. 31)
Edward Gibbon (1856)

Feeling, Study

“Fame and fortune is a magnet.
It can pull you far away from home
With a dream in your heart you're never alone.
Dreams turn into dust and blow away
And there you are without a friend”

Hal David (1921–2012) American lyricist

Song Do You Know the Way to San Jose

Dreams, Home, Heart

“If his inmost heart could have been laid open, there would have been discovered that dream of undying fame, which, dream as it is, is more powerful than a thousand realities.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book Fanshawe

"Fanshawe" (1828)

Dreams, Reality, Heart

“Posthumous fame, book fame, nerd fame is not like the good kind of fame. It might last for centuries and let antique egg heads torture the young from the grave, but it just doesn't pay the bills.”

Laura Penny (1975) Canadian journalist

Source: More Money than Brains (2010), Chapter Seven, If You're So Smart, Why Ain't You Rich?, p. 206 (See also: Henry David Thoreau, Karl Marx, James Joyce, Herman Mellville...)

Books

“And I think that my whole life, looking back at it, I was so rooted in worldly things, in worldly values, fame, fashion and fortune and all the things that are just transient.”

Jani Allan (1952) South African columnist and broadcaster

Speaking in 1995 in an SABC interview about a change of philosophy following her libel case against Channel 4. http://70.84.171.10/~etools/newsbrief/1995/news0103 Other

Life, Fashion, Thinking

“Fame is not the glory; virtue is the goal, and Fame only a messenger to bring more to the fold.”

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

Degrees: Thought Capsules and Micro Tales (1989)

Powerful

“I owe my fame only to myself.”

Pierre Corneille (1606–1684) French tragedian

Je ne dois qu'à moi seul toute ma renommée.
"L'Excuse à Ariste" (1637).

“From history's examples we conclude,
And modern instances teach us the same:
Good follows Evil, Evil follows Good,
Shame ends in glory, glory ends in shame.
Thus it is evident that no man should
Put trust in victories or wealth or fame,
Nor yet despair if Fortune is adverse:
She turns her wheel for better, as for worse.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Si vede per gli esempi di che piene
Sono l'antiche e le moderne istorie,
Che 'l ben va dietro al male, e 'l male al bene,
E fin son l'un de l'altro e biasmi e glorie;
E che fidarsi a l'uom non si conviene
In suo tesor, suo regno e sue vittorie,
Né disperarsi per Fortuna avversa,
Che sempre la sua ruota in giro versa.
Canto XLV, stanza 4 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

History, Evil, Victory, Despair

“Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold;
But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.”

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

No Time like the old Time; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Friendship

“Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.”

Charles Wolfe (1791–1823) Irish poet

The Burial of Sir John Moore.

“He who maligns an absent friend's fair fame,
Who says no word for him when others blame,
Who courts a reckless laugh by random hits,
Just for the sake of ranking among wits,
Who feigns what he ne'er saw, a secret blabs,
Beware him, Roman! that man steals or stabs!”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Book I, satire iv, p. 18
Translations, The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry of Horace (1869), Satires

Secret

“There are names written in her immortal scroll, at which FAME blushes!”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

No. 53
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

“O dream of fame, what hast thou been to me
But the destroyer of life's calm content!”

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

Erinna
The Golden Violet (1827)

Life, Dreams

“Fame sometimes hath created something of nothing.”

Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) English churchman and historian

Of Fame.
The Holy State and the Profane State (1642)

“Unblemish'd let me live, or die unknown;
O grant an honest fame, or grant me none!”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Closing line.
The Temple of Fame (1711)

“When I was better known than her, she put my name in that tent. I was asked to do Celebrity Big Brother, but why should I? We live in an age where fame is not related to what you do.”

Billy Childish (1959) British musician

Tim Teeman, "The importance of being Childish", http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22876-2475809.html The Times, 2006-12-02 Childish's name is the most prominent in Tracey Emin's Everyone I have Ever Slept With 1963&ndash;1995, appliquéd names in a tent (destroyed in the Momart warehouse fire).

Age

“The love of fame, as it enters at times into his mind, is only another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority — that of time.”

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"

Love, Time

“The modern poet is above all things honest. He does not write for fame nor for money. He merely writes to vent his own spleen, his own bitterness. His own sense of disparity between the ugliness of the world that is and the beauty of the world that might be.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

Phases in English Poetry (1928)

Money, World, Beauty, Sense

“Had Abraham Lincoln died from any of the numerous ills to which flesh is heir; had he reached that good old age of which his vigorous constitution and his temperate habits gave promise; had he been permitted to see the end of his great work; had the solemn curtain of death come down but gradually, we should still have been smitten with a heavy grief, and treasured his name lovingly. But dying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate, for no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him, but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever. Fellow citizens, I end, as I began, with congratulations. We have done a good work for our race today. In doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honors to ourselves and those who come after us. We have been fastening ourselves to a name and fame imperishable and immortal; we have also been defending ourselves from a blighting scandal. When now it shall be said that the colored man is soulless, that he has no appreciation of benefits or benefactors; when the foul reproach of ingratitude is hurled at us, and it is attempted to scourge us beyond the range of human brotherhood, we may calmly point to the monument we have this day erected to the memory of Abraham Lincoln.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Death, Hate, Age, Color

“And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round. Let us then declare that King Arthur and his noble knights, guarding the Sacred Flame of Christianity and the theme of a world order, sustained by valour, physical strength, and good horses and armour, slaughtered innumerable hosts of foul barbarians and set decent folk an example for all time.”

Winston S. Churchill book A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

On King Arthur Vol I; The Birth of Britain.
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–58)

Men, World, Law, Freedom

“Till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. I
Adonais (1821)

Fate, Light, Past, Future

“I hold no dream of fortune vast,
Nor seek undying fame.
I do not ask when life is past
That many know my name.I may not own the skill to rise
To glory's topmost height,
Nor win a place among the wise,
But I can keep the right.And I can live my life on earth
Contented to the end,
If but a few shall know my worth
And proudly call me friend.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Success.
Just Folks (1917)

Life, Dreams, Past

“It is very natural that clever young men should be rather odious. They are conscious of gifts that they do not know how to use. They are exasperated with the world that will not recognize their merit. They have something to give, and no hand is stretched out to receive it. They are impatient for the fame they regard as their due.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

"The voice of the turtle", p. 250
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

Men, World, Nature

“Gentlemen, ideas outlive men; ideas outlive all earthly things. You who fought in the war for the Union fought for immortal ideas, and by their might you crowned the war with victory. [Great applause. ] But victory was worth nothing except for the truths that were under it, in it, and above it. We meet tonight as comrades to stand guard around the sacred truths for which we fought. [Loud and prolonged cheers. ] And while we have life to meet and grasp the hand of a comrade, we will stand by the great truths of the war. ["Good," "good," and loud cheers. ] Many convictions have sunk so deep into our hearts that we can never forget them. Think of the elevating spirit of the war itself. We gathered the boys from all our farms and shops and stores and schools and homes, from all over the Republic. They went forth unknown to fame, but returned enrolled on the roster of immortal heroes. [Great applause. ] They went in the spirit of the soldiers of Henry at Agincourt, of whom he said. 'For he today that sheds his blood with me. Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile. This day shall gentle his condition.'”

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

1880s, Speech to the 'Boys in Blue' (1880)

Life, Men, War, Truth

“O Mother, I throw myself on Thy mercy; I take shelter at Thy Hallowed Feet. I do not want bodily comforts; I do not crave name and fame; I do not seek the eight occult powers. Be gracious and grant that I may have pure love for Thee, a love unsmitten by desire, untainted by any selfish ends — a love craved by the devotee for the sake of love alone. And grant me the favour, O Mother, that I may not be deluded by Thy world-bewitching māyā, that I may never be attached to the world, to "woman and gold", conjured up by Thy inscrutable māyā! O Mother, there is no one but Thee whom I mav call my own. Mother, I do not know how to worship; I am without austerity; I have neither devotion nor knowledge. Be gracious, Mother, and out of Thy infinite mercy grant me love for Thy Lotus Feet.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 731

Love, World, Knowledge, Selfishness

“A famous writer who wants to continue writing has to be constantly defending himself against fame. I don't really like to say this because it never sounds sincere, but I would really have liked for my books to have been published after my death, so I wouldn't have to go through all this business of fame and being a great writer. In my case, the only advantage to fame is that I have been able to give it a political use. Otherwise, it is quite uncomfortable. The problem is that you're famous for twenty-four hours a day, and you can't say, "Okay, I won't be famous until tomorrow," or press a button and say, "I won't be famous here or now."”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Source: The Paris Review interview (1981), p. 337

Death, Books, Business, Problem

“That servile path thou nobly dost decline
Of tracing word by word, and line by line;
A new and nobler way thou dost pursue
To make translations, and translators too;
They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame,
True to his sense, but truer to his fame.”

John Denham (1615–1669) English poet and courtier

To Sir Richard Fanshaw, Upon his Translation of Pastor Fido, line 15.

Way, Sense

“Go where glory waits thee,
But while fame elates thee,
Oh! still remember me!”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Go Where Glory Waits Thee, st. 1. Irish Melodies http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/moore.html (1807–1834)

Waiting

“If you will observe, it doesn’t take
A man of giant mould to make
A giant shadow on the wall;
And he who in our daily sight
Seems but a figure mean and small,
Outlined in Fame’s illusive light,
May stalk, a silhouette sublime,
Across the canvas of his time.”

John Townsend Trowbridge (1827–1916) American author

Authors’ Night.

Light, Time

“On September 13, 1888, Jonathan Goforth, famed Canadian pioneer Presbyterian missionary to China, made his first exploration tour of North Honan. Honan was considered one of the most anti-foreign and dangerous parts of China. Yet God had called Goforth to it. Hudson Taylor wrote him, “We have been trying, unsuccessfully, for ten years, to get into Honan. We’ve been beaten, stoned, and turned back time and again. Brother, if you would enter that province, you must go forward on your knees!”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(from Bill Fietje letter).

God, Time, Parting

“He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

The reference is to Charles Townshend (1725–1767)
First Speech on the Conciliation with America (1774)

Soul, Passion

“The battellis and the man I will discriue,
Fra Troyis boundis first that fugitiue
By fate to Italie come and coist lauyne,
Ouer land and se cachit with meikill pyne
By force of goddis aboue fra euery stede
Of cruel luno throw auld remembrit feid:
Grete payne in batelles sufferit he also,
Or he his goddis brocht in Latio
And belt the ciete, fra quham of nobil fame
The latyne peopill taken has thare name,
And eke the faderis, princis of Alba,
Come, and the walleris of grete Rome alsua.”

Gavin Douglas (1474–1522) Scottish Churchman, Scholar, Poet

The battles and the man I will describe
From Troy's bounds first that fugitive
By fate to Italy came and coast Lavinia,
Over land and sea driven with great pain
By force of gods above from every stead,
Of cruel Juno through old remembered wrath:
Great pain in battles suffered he also,
Or he his gods brought in Latium
And built the city, from which of noble fame
The Latin people taken have their name,
And also the fathers, princes of Alba,
Came, and the wall-builders of great Rome also.
Bk. 1, line 1.
Eneados

Fate

“Cause when you're a Celebrity,
It's adios reality.
You can act just like a fool.
People think you're cool
Just cause you're on TV.
I can throw major fits
When my latte isn't just how I like it.
They say I've gone insane,
I'll blame it on the fame,
And the pressures that it goes with
Being a Celebrity.”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

Celebrity, written by Brad Paisley.
Song lyrics, Mud on the Tires (2003)

People, Fools, Thinking, Reality

“Risk nothing, get nothing. If you wanna be famous, then it's OK if the music is fake, because fame isn't real.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

" Queens of the Stone Age: Josh Homme comes back from the brink http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/jun/01/queens-stone-age-like-clockwork" The Guardian (June 1, 2013)

Music

“I hate the man who builds his name
On ruins of another's fame.
Thus prudes, by characters o'erthrown,
Imagine that they raise their own.
Thus Scribblers, covetous of praise,
Think slander can transplant the bays.”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Fable XLV, "The Poet and the Rose"
Fables (1727)

Hate, Imagination, Thinking

“There is no end to the war and death caused by man or to the tears shed by all the innocent victims of such tragedies. What were all these for? Only for conquering, establishing superiority and satisfying our greed for money and fame. Mankind has taken upon itself countless curses. In order to attain freedom from these curses, at least a hundred generations to come should wipe the tears of the suffering, striving to console them and alleviate their pain. At least now, as an atonement, shouldn’t we try to introspect?”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Compassion: The Only Way to Peace (2007)

Death, Money, Pain, War

“In what a narrow circuit, among what
abandoned solitudes your fame lies bound!
Amid vast seas your island earth is shut,
though "vast" or "ocean", or what words resound
to name that sea, are idle names and fond,
for what it is: a shallow bog, a pond.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

In che picciolo cerchio, e fra che nude
Solitudini è stretto il vostro fasto!
Lei, come isola, il mare intorno chiude;
E lui, ch'or Ocean chiamate or vasto,
Nulla eguale a tai nomi ha in sè di magno;
Ma è bassa palude, e breve stagno.
Canto XIV, stanza 10 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Solitude, Sea

“Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson Brahma

Brahma, st. 2
1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

God, Appearance

“…a fetid cabaret with a beer-bar, two houses of ill-fame disguised as coffee-shops…”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Beds in the East (1959)

Coffee, Beer, Housing

“I enjoy my life. The fame part of it freaked me out for a little while, and there are definitely times when it's not so great to be special and known by everybody — you know, when you're wearing the wrong thing, or just in a vulnerable place. But I'm good with my life now.”

Jim Carrey (1962) Canadian-American actor, comedian, and producer

As quoted in Jim Carrey: Bruce Almighty http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2003/06/16/jim_carrey_bruce_almighty_interview.shtml by Stella Papamichael, at BBC (16 June 2003)

Life, Time, Parting

“Do you suppose a woman knows why she loves? Does she select? Does she say to herself, 'Go to! here is a distinguished statesman with presidential possibilities; I shall proceed to fall in love with him.' or, 'I shall set my heart upon this musician, whose fame is on every tongue?”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

or 'this financier, who controls the world's money markets?'"
The Awakening (1899)

Love, Money, World, Heart

“Knighthood lies above eternity; it doesn’t live off fame, but rather deeds.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“Eternity and Eternity,” p. 32
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “Skywalking”

“I came out here with an agenda tonight, to make a statement. And the reason is that WrestleMania 21 is less than five weeks away. We've already announced some of the biggest matches in Mania history. From Batista vs. Triple H for the World Championship, from Cena to JBL for the WWE Championship, Michaels has challenged Angle, Hogan's in the Hall of Fame, Stone Cold Steve Austin on Piper's Pit. Everybody wants to make an impact, so do I; everybody wants to be a part of history, so do I. I have an idea for a match to do that. It's a match that involves Y2J, five other elite WWE Superstars, a chance of a lifetime, and most importantly, one very big solid steel ladder.”

Chris Jericho (1970) American professional wrestler, musician, television host, podcast host and author

February 28, 2005 - WWE Raw

World, History, Idea, Chance

“Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models. We lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous but are famous because they are great. We come closer and closer to degrading all fame into notoriety.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Source: The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961), p. 48.

Women, Men

“Fame doesn't affect my relationships with people much because I've got my head on straight, but there is some sort of undertone that has a weird effect when you're trying to walk through life – I'm not interested in seeing "the media" manifest itself in my life. I don't even like to call acting a career. I prefer to think of it as a project, or else I'd start worrying about things like money. I like contributing to causes, people and the world around me. Just kind of sharing it all, that's what's important.”

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

Hard Rock Times (1991)

Life, Money, People, World

“Maybe I’m not in the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame like so many of my baseball buddies, but I’m happy I had the chance to play pro ball and am especially proud of my contributions to my country. Perhaps I could not hit like Babe Ruth, but I spoke more languages than he did.”

Moe Berg (1902–1972) baseball player, spy

As quoted by Cia.gov https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2013-featured-story-archive/moe-berg.html prior to his death in (1972)

Chance, Country, Happiness

“I think fame itself is not a rewarding thing. The most you can say is that it gets you a seat in restaurants.”

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

Interviewed in Q magazine (April 1990)

Thinking

“Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,
And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.”

James Russell Lowell The Present Crisis

St. 11
The Present Crisis (1844)

Truth, Faith

John Clare (1793–1864) English poet

Popularity of Authorship (1824)

Business, Time, Falseness

“You can't get a big head about [fame]. When people stare at me, they could be whispering to their friend, 'That guy sucks! Have you seen him before? He's horrible.”

David Spade (1964) American stand-up comedian

Hollywood Minute, Saturday Night Live

People, Guy

“I have generally made it a rule to parry the inquiries and comparisons which the Americans are so apt to thrust at an Englishman. On one or two occasions, when the party has been numerous and worth powder and shot, I have, however, on being hard pressed, and finding my British blood up, found the only mode of allaying their inordinate vanity to be by resorting to this mode of argument:—"I admit all that you or any other person can, could, may, or might advance in praise of the past career of the people of America. Nay, more, I will myself assert that no nation ever did, and in my opinion none ever will, achieve such a title to respect, wonder, and gratitude in so short a period; and further still, I venture to allege that the imagination of statesmen never dreamed of a country that should in half a century make such prodigious advances in civilization and real greatness as yours has done. And now I must add, and I am sure you, as intelligent, reasonable men, will go with me, that fifty years are too short a period in the existence of nations to entitle them to the palm of history. No, wait the ordeal of wars, distresses, and prosperity (the most dangerous of all), which centuries of duration are sure to bring to your country. These are the test, and if, many ages hence, your descendants shall be able only to say of their country as much as I am entitled to say of mine now, that for seven hundred years we have existed as a nation constantly advancing in liberty, wealth, and refinement; holding out the lights of philosophy and true religion to all the world; presenting mankind with the greatest of human institutions in the trial by jury; and that we are the only modern people that for so long a time withstood the attacks of enemies so heroically that a foreign foe never put foot in our capital except as a prisoner (this last is a poser);—if many centuries hence your descendants will be entitled to say something equivalent to this, then, and not till then, will you be entitled to that crown of fame which the historian of centuries is entitled to award."”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to F. Cobden (5 July 1835) during his visit to the United States, quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), pp. 33-34.
1830s

Men, War, People, Age

“Our books have informed us that the pre-eminence in chivalry and learning once belonged to Greece. Then chivalry passed to Rome, together with that highest learning which now has come to France. God grant that it may be cherished here, and that it may be made so welcome here that the honour which has taken refuge with us may never depart from France: God had awarded it as another's share, but of Greeks and Romans no more is heard, their fame is passed, and their glowing ash is dead.”

Chrétien de Troyes Cligès

At Wikisource, Vv. 1-44
Cliges

God, Books, Learning, Dead

“Happiness is not defined by our wealth or our status, but by how we choose to live our lives. Only when we are not entangled in the pursuit of fame and wealth will we truly be liberated. A liberated life is a life truly worth living.”

Jun Hong Lu (1959) Australian Buddhist leader

New World Times, (29 June 2018)[citation needed].

Life, Wealth, Happiness

“… There's a joy,
To the fond votaries of fame unknown,
To hear the still small voice of conscience speak
In whisp'ring plaudit to the silent soul.”

Hannah More (1745–1833) English religious writer and philanthropist

David and Goliath, Pt. I

Soul, Joy

“The waters were his winding sheet, the sea was made for his tomb;
Yet for his fame the ocean sea, was not sufficient room.”

Richard Barnfield (1574–1627) English poet

Epitaph on Hawkins (1595).

Water, Sea

“What do you think of Spinoza? For me he is the ideal example of the cosmic man. He worked as an obscure diamond cutter, disdaining fame and a place at the table of the great. He tells us the importance of understanding our emotions and suggests what causes them. Man will never be free until he is able to direct his emotions to think clearly. Only then can he control his environment and preserve his energy for creative work.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 26

Understanding, Thinking

“Folly loves the martyrdom of fame.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Source: Monody on the Death of Sheridan (1816), Line 68.

Love

“For already I have learned, that a general's fame
stands on a pile of dry bones
Of what were once the people.”

Ts'ao Sung (830–901)

Tsao Sung, War. In: Yu Kuan-ying (1954) "Book Review Peace Throwgh the Ages" in People's China, (1954) nr 14. July 16, 1954.-->

People, Learning

“Her heart and lip were music, albeit one
Who marvell'd at what her sweet self had done;
Who breathed for Love, and pined to find that Fame
In answer to her lute's soft summons came;
See, the eye droops in sadness, as to shun
That which it dared not gaze on, Glory's sun.”

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

(1825-2) Ideal Likenesses. Erinna
The Monthly Magazine

Love, Sadness, Music, Sun

“A golden opportunity to show the world your talent. Fame, appreciation and love follows.”

Drashti Dhami (1985) Indian television actress and model

Best thing about TV http://www.mid-day.com/articles/world-television-day-small-screen-wonders/241272

Love, World

“Because the book became a freak 'bestseller', because I found myself bracketed with the 'Angry Young Men' of the period, I found myself carried to 'fame' on a wave of publicity -- only to discover that this kind of fame is one of the subtlest forms of obscurity. Everybody knew who I was, and nobody knew what I stood for. The public image meant that nobody was interested in what I had to say, for everyone was convinced that they already knew. I could talk until I was blue in the face about my attempt to revise the pessimistic existentialism of Heidegger, Camus and Sartre; as far as most people were concerned, I was an autodidact who was angry about something or other.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: The Bicameral Critic (1985), p. 188, George Bernard Shaw: A personal view (1979)

Men, People, Books

“To-day's house makes to-morrow’s road;
I knew these heaps of stone
When they were walls of grace and might,
The country’s honour, art’s delight
That over fountain'd silence show'd
Fame's final bastion.”

Edmund Blunden (1896–1974) English poet, author and literary critic

The Survival http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-survival/ (1921)

Art, Silence, Housing, Country

“Whoever has recognized the vainglory of individuality will not attach any store ("n'attachera aucun prix à", Fr.) to fame. The only one thing which is really valuable, it is to do good.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

From the Esquisse biographique, by Hélène Claparède-Spir, p. 17.
Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)

“The ordinary surroundings of life which are esteemed by men (as their actions testify) to be the highest good, may be classed under the three heads — Riches, Fame, and the Pleasures of Sense: with these three the mind is so absorbed that it has little power to reflect on any different good.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

I, 3
Variant translation: The things which … are esteemed as the greatest good of all … can be reduced to these three headings, to wit : Riches, Fame, and Pleasure. With these three the mind is so engrossed that it cannot scarcely think of any other good.
On the Improvement of the Understanding (1662)

Life, Men, Pleasure, Sense

“Up on Housing Project Hill, it's either fortune or fame. You must pick one or the other, though neither of them are to be what they claim.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues

Housing

Quotes about fame page 5

Quotes about fame
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