"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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.""

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

"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!""

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

"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."

"Fame sometimes hath created something of nothing."

"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."

"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."

"“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.”"

"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!"

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"Artists shouldn't be made famous."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

"FAMOUS, adj. Conspicuously miserable."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed—I well know. For it's a sign that he tried to surpass himself."

"For he that believeth, bearing in hand, Plougheth in the water, and soweth in the sand."

"Not all who seem to fail have failed indeed, Not all who fail have therefor worked in vain. There is no failure for the good and brave."

"Abraham Van Helsing: Nothing is too small. I counsel you, put down in record even your doubts and surmises. Hereafter it may be of interest to you to see how true you guess. We learn from failure, not from success!"

"We have scotch'd the snake, not killed it."

"And each forgets, as he strips and runs With a brilliant, fitful pace, It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones Who win in the lifelong race. And each forgets that his youth has fled, Forgets that his prime is past, Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead, In the glare of the truth at last."

"Here's to the men who lose! What though their work be e'er so nobly plann'd And watched with zealous care; No glorious halo crowns their efforts grand— Contempt is Failure's share!"

"How are the mighty fallen!"

"[Il] battoit les buissons sans prendre les ozillons."

"Allow me to offer my congratulations on the truly admirable skill you have shown in keeping clear of the mark. Not to have hit once in so many trials, argues the most splendid talents for missing."

"Quod si deficiant vires, audacia certe Laus erit: in magnis et voluisse sat est."