Motivational Quotes

Fame

He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds; but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel.

- Johnson, Samuel

Best Quotes about Fame

How great are the dangers I face to win a good name in Athens.

Alexander The Great

Now there is fame! Of all -- hunger, misery, the incomprehension by the public -- fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation of God by the artist. It is sad. It is true.

Picasso, Pablo

To many fame comes too late.

Camoens, Luis De

He who pursues fame at the risk of losing his self is not a scholar.

Chuang-tzu

There has never been a statue erected to the memory of someone who let well enough alone.

Ellinger, Jules

Fame is proof that the people are gullible.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

To have had fame, even very minor fame, and to have lost it, got older and maybe put on a little weight is a kind of living death.

David Nicholls

It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour.

Hellman, Lillian

I'm a bit of an abstract figure that people can project their fantasies on; it's pretty much what we all are, otherwise we wouldn't be stars, and people wouldn't be interested. But people project things on you that have nothing to do with what you really are, or they see a little something and then exaggerate it. And you can't really control that.

Salma Hayek

10.

May the countryside and the gliding valley streams content me. Lost to fame, let me love river and woodland.

Maro, Virgil Publius Vergilius

11.

Fame hides her head among the clouds.

Virgil

12.

I was the only one there I never heard of.

Farber, Barry J.

13.

It is a wretched thing to live on the fame of others.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

14.

Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime. And, departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

15.

There have been as great souls unknown to fame as any of the most famous.

Franklin, Benjamin

16.

If fame is to come only after death, I am in no hurry for it.

Martial, Marcus Valerius

17.

Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.

Benjamin Haydon

18.

Fame has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it, we must direct our lives so as to please the fancy of men.

Spinoza, Baruch (Benedict de)

19.

Fame will go by and, so long, I've had you, fame. If it goes by, I've always known it was fickle. So at least it's something I experienced, but that's not where I live.

Monroe, Marilyn

20.

Few people rise to our esteem upon closer scrutiny.

Proverb, French

21.

I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

Huxley, Aldous

22.

The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition. In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more efficiency than anyone else thereby gains social access to the President of the United States.

Mills, C. Wright

23.

My great comfort is, that the temporary celebrity I have wrung from the world has been in the very teeth of all opinions and prejudices. I have flattered no ruling powers; I have never concealed a single thought that tempted me.

Byron, Lord

24.

Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

25.

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.

Boorstin, Daniel J.

26.

It's too bad I'm not as wonderful a person as people say I am, because the world could use a few people like that.

Alda, Alan

27.

What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.

Erasmus, Desiderius

28.

All the fame you should look for in life is to have lived it quietly.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

29.

If I'm such a legend, then why am I so lonely? Let me tell you, legends are all very well if you've got somebody around who loves you.

Garland, Judy

30.

I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.

Martial, Marcus Valerius

31.

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.

Hazlitt, William

32.

Celebrity is never more admired than by the negligent.

Shakespeare, William

33.

Glory is like a circle in the water, Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, Till by broad spreading it disperses to naught.

William Shakespeare

34.

A celebrity is a person who works hard all of their life to become well known, and then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.

Allen, Fred A.

35.

Riches: A dream in the night. Fame: A gull floating on water.

Proverb, Chinese

36.

It's going to come true like you knew it, but it's not going to feel like you think.

Rosie O'Donnell

37.

I had it all and blew it.

Mantle, Mickey

38.

The fame of great men ought to be judged always by the means they used to acquire it.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

39.

Throughout my life, I have seen narrow-shouldered men, without a single exception, committing innumerable stupid acts, brutalizing their fellows and perverting souls by all means. They call the motive for their actions fame.

Lautreamont, Isidore Ducasse, Comte De

40.

To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten.

Cioran, E. M.

41.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

42.

The longer a man's fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

43.

Popular applause veers with the wind.

Bright, John

44.

Fame is an illusive thing -- here today, gone tomorrow. The fickle, shallow mob raises its heroes to the pinnacle of approval today and hurls them into oblivion tomorrow at the slightest whim; cheers today, hisses tomorrow; utter forgetfulness in a few months.

Miller, Henry

45.

It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.

Nabokov, Vladimir

46.

A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.

Davis, Miles

47.

There is not in the world so toilsome a trade as the pursuit of fame; life concludes before you have so much as sketched your work.

Bruyere, Jean De La

48.

The difference between great celebrities and the unknown is the former failed and yet went at it again; the latter gave up in despair.

49.

Oblivion is the rule and fame the exception, of humanity.

Rivarol, Antoine

50.

Living in L.A., everyone likes to mold you and change you. I don't care about fame, I don't care about being a celebrity. I know that's part of the job, but I don't feed into anyone's idea of who I should be.

Jessica Alba