Fame

"Let the cymbals of popularity tinkle still. Let the butterflies of fame glitter with their wings. I shall envy neither their music nor their colors."

"Even a master of the three knowledges, who has conquered death, and is without defilements, is looked down on for being unknown by ignorant fools. But any person here who gets food and drink is honored by them even if they are of bad character."

"In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes."

"Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar!"

"FAMOUS, adj. Conspicuously miserable."

"A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness."

"Fame, (fame) what you get is no tomorrow Fame, (fame) what you need you have to borrow Fame (fame)."

"Fame is a form—perhaps the worst form—of incomprehension."

"Thinking, meditating, imagining are not anomalous acts – they are the normal respiration of the intelligence. To glorify the occasional exercise of that function, to treasure beyond price ancient and foreign thoughts, to recall with incredulous awe what some doctor universalis thought, is to confess our own languor, or our own barbarie. Every man should be capable of all ideas, and I believe that in the future he shall be."

"Is it any wonder I reject you first? Fame, fame, fame, fame Is it any wonder you are too cool to fool Fame (fame)."

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

"In the past, ... when a bhikkhu was a forest dweller and spoke in praise of forest dwelling; ... when he was secluded and spoke in praise of solitude; when he was aloof from society and spoke in praise of aloofness from society; … the elder bhikkhus would invite him to a seat. ... Now it is the bhikkhu who is well known and famous ... that the elder bhikkhus invite to a seat. ... Then it occurs to the newly ordained bhikkhus: ‘It seems that when a bhikkhu is well known and famous, ... the elder bhikkhus invite him to a seat.’ ... They practise accordingly, and that leads to their harm and suffering for a long time."

"Artists shouldn't be made famous."

"What is the end of Fame? 'tis but to fill A certain portion of uncertain paper: Some liken it to climbing up a hill, Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour: For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill, And bards burn what they call their "midnight taper," To have, when the original is dust, A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust."

"Ó glória de mandar! Ó vã cobiça Desta vaidade, a quem chamamos Fama!"

"Je ne dois qu'à moi seul toute ma renommée."

"I am not concerned that I have no place; I am concerned how I may fit myself for one. I am not concerned that I am not known; I seek to be worthy to be known."

"Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to go and get insulted."

"How dreary — to be — Somebody! How public — like a Frog — To tell one's name — the livelong June — To an admiring Bog!"

"Fame is a food that dead men eat — I have no stomach for such meat."

"Fame! I'm gonna live forever I'm gonna learn how to fly (high!) I feel it coming together People will see me and cry!"

"“There is fame and there is infamy,” she said. “The impatient and the prideful are often driven to reach for the one and find that, in their haste, they have grabbed the other.”"

"All this fame and money, which have so thrilled me when they came to others, leave me cold when they come to me. I am not an ascetic, but I don't know what to do with them, and my daily life has never been so trying, and there is no one to fill it emotionally."

"He doth raise his country's fame with his own And in the mouths of nations yet unborn His praises will be sung; Death comes to all, But great achievements build a monument Which shall endure until the sun grows cold."

"Fame sometimes hath created something of nothing."

"If that thy fame with ev'ry toy be pos'd, 'Tis a thin web, which poysonous fancies make; But the great souldier's honour was compos'd Of thicker stuf, which would endure a shake. Wisdom picks friends; civility plays the rest; A toy shunn'd cleanly passeth with the best."

"Young Isaac had dreamed of fame. Young Isaac was an idiot."

"Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable. Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else, – very rarely to those who say to themselves, "Go to, now, let us be a celebrated individual!""

"There is a proud undying thought in man, That bids his soul still upward look To fame's proud cliff!"

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

"The cosmologist Fred Hoyle once warned Gell-Mann about the perils of fame. If you ever accomplish anything important in life, he said, the world will conspire to keep you from doing anything else again. Everyone wants you to give a speech, write an article, serve on a committee."

"How fever'd is that Man who cannot look"

"It goes against the grain for me to do what so often happens, to speak inhumanly about the great as if a few millennia were an immense distance. I prefer to speak humanly about it, as if it happened yesterday, and let only the greatness itself be the distance."

"It is the veriest madness man In maddest mood can frame, To feed the earth with human gore, And then to call it fame."

"Everyone watches you. Even when they’re pretending not to. Even when they aren’t watching you, you think they are. And you know what? You’re right. Eyes will find you. Becoming famous, this kind of fame: it’s luck indistinguishable from catastrophe."

"We labor, certain stone will hold our name, Yet time reclaims the proudest works we’ve known; Meaning is found not in monuments or fame, But in the care we give to life beyond our own."

"Why were they all so eager for fame? Surely nothing was ever less worth thinking about."

"Fame, fame, fatal fame It can play hideous tricks on the brain But still I'd rather be famous than righteous or holy Any day, any day, any day"

"Nolo virum facili redimit qui sanguine famam; Hunc volo laudari qui sine morte potest."

"Si post fata venit gloria non propero."

"Since when has mental illness ever interfered with superstardom? Since when has delusion impeded huge fame?"

"The people who deserve the most respect and admiration get the least: scientists The people who deserve the least respect and admiration get the most: celebrities"

"Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days."

"Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows."

"I always like to say to people who want to be rich and famous, try being rich first. See if that doesn't cover most of it."

"Fame is not creativity, it’s the industrial disease of creativity."

"The courage to stand alone as if others didn't exist and think only of what you're doing. Not to get scared if people ignore you. You have to wait for years, have to die. Then after you're dead, if you're lucky, you become somebody."

"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."

"Scarce any Tale was sooner heard than told; And all who told it, added something new, And all who heard it, made Enlargements too, In ev'ry Ear it spread, on ev'ry Tongue it grew."

"Nor Fame I slight, nor her favors call; She comes unlooked for, if she comes at all."

"Unblemish'd let me live or die unknown; Oh, grant an honest fame, or grant me none!"

"What's fame? a fancy'd life in others' breath. A thing beyond us, e'en before our death."

"If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shin'd, The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind: Or, ravish'd with the whistling of a name, See Cromwell, damn'd to everlasting fame."

"Judas: Nazareth's most famous son Should have stayed a great unknown Like his father carving wood He'd have made good Table chairs and oaken chests Would have suited Jesus best He'd have caused nobody harm, no one alarm."

"Honor … means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost."

"[B]eing famous or well known can be nice or it can be a burden, it all depends on how you look at it."

"Fame's a weed, but repute is a slow-growing oak, and all we can do during our lifetimes is hop around like squirrels and plant acorns."

"Erant quibus appetentior famæ videretur, quando etiam sapientibus cupido gloriæ novissima exuitur"

"Sweet were the days when I was all unknown, But when my name was lifted up, the storm Brake on the mountain and I cared not for it. Right well know I that Fame is half-disfame."

"The Fame that follows death is nothing to us; And what is Fame in life but half-disfame, And counterchanged with darkness?"

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

"In our overcrowded modern world a hit record, a best-selling book, a successful film, can reach more people in a week than Shakespeare or Beethoven reached in a whole lifetime. And so fame has become the most romantic, the most desirable of all commodities, the dream for which a modern Faust might sell his soul to the Devil. Once attained, fame is never as easy to hold on to as some people believe. The people who achieve fame by some accident of fashion are usually forgotten within a week; the ones who remain on top have to work to stay there. But few people understand this. The result is that anyone who achieves sudden notoriety arouses envy and hostility. The greater the success, the greater the reaction."

"With fame, in just proportion, envy grows."

"Men should press forward, in fame's glorious chase; Nobles look backward, and so lose the race."

"Wouldst thou be famed? have those high acts in view, Brave men would act though scandal would ensue."

"Fame is the shade of immortality, And in itself a shadow. Soon as caught, Contemn'd; it shrinks to nothing in the grasp."

"One who seeks fame and thereby loses his real self is no gentleman."

"A niche in the temple of Fame."

"Were not this desire of fame very strong, the difficulty of obtaining it, and the danger of losing it when obtained, would be sufficient to deter a man from so vain a pursuit."

"And what after all is everlasting fame? Altogether vanity."

"Nothing can cover his high fame but Heaven: No pyramids set off his memories But the eternal substance of his greatness; To which I leave him."

"The best-concerted schemes men lay for fame, Die fast away: only themselves die faster. The far-fam'd sculptor, and the laurell'd bard, Those bold insurancers of deathless fame, Supply their little feeble aids in vain."

"Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana; he is almost lost that built it."

"I awoke one morning and found myself famous."

"Folly loves the martyrdom of fame."

"O Fame!—if I e'er took delight in thy praises, 'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases, Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover She thought that I was not unworthy to love her."

"Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property of a man."

"Scarcely two hundred years back can Fame recollect articulately at all; and there she but maunders and mumbles."

"Men the most infamous are fond of fame, And those who fear not guilt, yet start at shame."

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

"Non é il mondam romore altro che un fiato Di vento, che vien quinci ed or vien quindi, E muta nome, perchè muta lato."

"La vostra nominanza é color d'erba, Che viene e va; e quei la discolora Per cui ell' esce della terra acerba."

"What shall I do to be forever known, And make the age to come my own?"

"Who fears not to do ill yet fears the name, And free from conscience, is a slave to fame."

"The Duke of Wellington brought to the post of first minister immortal fame; a quality of success which would almost seem to include all others."

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

"'Tis a petty kind of fame At best, that comes of making violins; And saves no masses, either. Thou wilt go To purgatory none the less."

"Fame is the echo of actions, resounding them to the world, save that the echo repeats only the last part, but fame relates all, and often more than all."

"From kings to cobblers 'tis the same; Bad servants wound their masters' fame."

"Der rasche Kampf verewigt einen Mann, Er falle gleich, so preiset ihn das Lied."

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

"Thou hast a charmed cup, O Fame! A draught that mantles high, And seems to lift this earthly frame Above mortality. Away! to me—a woman—bring Sweet water from affection's spring."

"Short is my date, but deathless my renown."

"The rest were vulgar deaths unknown to fame."

"The life, which others pay, let us bestow, And give to fame what we to nature owe."

"Earth sounds my wisdom, and high heaven my fame."

"But sure the eye of time beholds no name, So blest as thine in all the rolls of fame."

"Where's Cæsar gone now, in command high and able? Or Xerxes the splendid, complete in his table? Or Tully, with powers of eloquence ample? Or Aristotle, of genius the highest example?"

"Fame has no necessary conjunction with praise: it may exist without the breath of a word: it is a recognition of excellence which must be felt but need not be spoken. Even the envious must feel it: feel it, and hate it in silence."

"Reputation being essentially contemporaneous, is always at the mercy of the Envious and the Ignorant. But Fame, whose very birth is posthumous, and which is only known to exist by the echo of its footsteps through congenial minds, can neither be increased nor diminished by any degree of wilfulness."

"Miserum est aliorum incumbere famæ."

""Let us now praise famous men"— Men of little showing— For their work continueth, And their work continueth, Greater than their knowing."

"Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny."

"Building nests in Fame's great temple, As in spouts the swallows build."

"His fame was great in all the land."

"Though the desire of fame be the last weakness Wise men put off."

"Read but o'er the Stories Of men most fam'd for courage or for counsaile And you shall find that the desire of glory Was the last frailty wise men put of; Be they presidents."

"Fame lulls the fever of the soul, and makes Us feel that we have grasp'd an immortality."

"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' abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life."

"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil."

"Fame, if not double fac'd, is double mouth'd, And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds; On both his wings, one black, the other white, Bears greatest names in his wild aery flight."

"Des humeurs desraisonnables des hommes, il semble que les philosophes mesmes se desfacent plus tard et plus envy de cette cy que de nulle autre: c'est la plus revesche et opiniastre; quia etiam bene proficientes animos tentare non cessat."

"I'll make thee glorious by my pen And famous by my sword."

"Ingenio stimulos subdere fama solet."

"At pulchrum est digito monstrari et dicier hic est."

"To the quick brow Fame grudges her best wreath While the quick heart to enjoy it throbs beneath: On the dead forehead's sculptured marble shown, Lo, her choice crown—its flowers are also stone."

"Who grasp'd at earthly fame, Grasped wind: nay, worse, a serpent grasped that through His hand slid smoothly, and was gone; but left A sting behind which wrought him endless pain."

"All crowd, who foremost shall be damn'd to fame."

"Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame, Do good by stealth, and blush to find it Fame."

"Above all Greek, above all Roman fame."

"And what is Fame? the Meanest have their Day, The Greatest can but blaze, and pass away."

"Omnia post obitum fingit majora vetustas: Majus ab exsequiis nomen in ora venit."

"Your fame shall (spite of proverbs) make it plain To write in water 's not to write in vain."

"May see thee now, though late, redeem thy name, And glorify what else is damn'd to fame."

"Better to leave undone, than by our deed Acquire too high a fame, when him we serve's away."

"Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, Live register'd upon our brazen tombs."

"Death makes no conquest of this conqueror: For now he lives in fame, though not in life."

"He lives in fame, that died in virtue's cause."

"Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds."

"Sloth views the towers of fame with envious eyes, Desirous still, still impotent to rise."

"No true and permanent Fame can be founded except in labors which promote the happiness of mankind."

"Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent."

"Etiam sapientibus cupido gloriæ novissima exuitur."

"Modestiæ fama neque summis mortalibus spernenda est."

"The whole earth is a sepulchre for famous men."

"Fama est obscurior annis."

"Ingrediturque solo, et caput inter nubila condit."

"In tenui labor, at tenuis non gloria."

"Tel brille au second rang, qui s'eclipse au premier."

"C'est un poids bien pesant qu'un nom trop tôt fameux."

"What rage for fame attends both great and small! Better be d—n'd than mentioned not at all."

"The highest greatness, surviving time and stone, is that which proceeds from the soul of man. Monarchs and cabinets, generals and admirals, with the pomp of court and the circumstance of war, in the lapse of time disappear from sight; but the pioneers of truth, though poor and lowly, especially those whose example elevates human nature, and teaches the rights of man, so that "a government of the people, by the people, for the people, may not perish from the earth;" such a harbinger can never be forgotten, and their renown spreads co-extensive with the cause they served so well."

"Live for something! Do good and leave behind you a monument of virtue that the storm of time can never destroy. Write your name in kindness, love, and mercy on the hearts of the thousands you come in contact with, year by year, and you will never be forgotten. Your name, your deeds, will be as legible on the hearts you leave behind, as the stars on the brow of evening. Good deeds will shine as the stars of heaven."

"I have learned to prize the quiet, lightning deed, not the applauding thunder at its heels that men call fame."

"How idle a boast, after all, is the immortality of a name! Time is ever silently turning over his pages; we are too much engrossed by the story of the present to think of the character and anecdotes that gave interest to the past; and each age is a volume thrown aside and forgotten."