Motivational Quotes

Fame

What desire for fame attends both great and small; better be damned than mentioned not at all!

- Wolcot, John

Best Quotes about Fame

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

Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.

Bennett, Alan

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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!

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

Some people obtain fame, others deserve it.

Lessing, Doris

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

Benjamin Haydon

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

Chuang-tzu

What's fame? a fancy'd life in other's breath. A thing beyond us, even before our death.

Pope, Alexander

Even the best things are not equal to their fame.

Thoreau, Henry David

10.

The fame you earn has a different taste from the fame that is forced upon you.

Vanderbilt, Gloria

11.

I won't be happy till I'm as famous as God.

Madonna

12.

Of present fame think little, and of future less; the praises that we receive after we are buried, like the flowers that are strewed over our grave, may be gratifying to the living, but they are nothing to the dead.

Colton, Charles Caleb

13.

To become a celebrity is to become a brand name. There is Ivory Soap, Rice Krispies, and Philip Roth. Ivory is the soap that floats; Rice Krispies the breakfast cereal that goes snap-crackle-pop; Philip Roth the Jew who masturbates with a piece of liver.

Roth, Philip

14.

If you're holding out for universal popularity, I'm afraid you will be in this cabin for a very long time.

J. K. Rowling

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.

Maugham, W. Somerset

19.

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

Hellman, Lillian

20.

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

Davis, Miles

21.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

22.

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

Nabokov, Vladimir

23.

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

24.

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

25.

If you're a misfit within a group of misfits, does that mean you're actually popular and normal?

Laura Preble

26.

Because I have conducted my own operas and love sheep-dogs; because I generally dress in tweeds, and sometimes, at winter afternoon concerts, have even conducted in them; because I was a militant suffragette and seized a chance of beating time to The March of the Women from the window of my cell in Holloway Prison with a tooth-brush; because I have written books, spoken speeches, broadcast, and don't always make sure that my hat is on straight; for these and other equally pertinent reasons, in a certain sense I am well known.

Smyth, Dame Ethel

27.

The love of the famous, like all strong passions, is quite abstract. Its intensity can be measured mathematically, and it is independent of persons.

Sontag, Susan

28.

Fame is proof that the people are gullible.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

I was the only one there I never heard of.

Farber, Barry J.

30.

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

Proverb, Chinese

31.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

32.

Fame is only good for one thing-they will cash your check in a small town.

Capote, Truman

33.

When you can do the common things in life in a uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.

Carver, George Washington

34.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

35.

Celebrity is never more admired than by the negligent.

Shakespeare, William

36.

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

Maro, Virgil Publius Vergilius

37.

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

38.

We movie stars all end up by ourselves. Who knows? Maybe we want to.

Davis, Bette

39.

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

40.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

41.

Popularity? It is glory's small change.

Victor Hugo

42.

To many fame comes too late.

Camoens, Luis De

43.

It is better to be a has-been than a never-was.

Parkinson, Cecil

44.

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

William Shakespeare

45.

Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.

Bacon, Francis

46.

There are names written in her immortal scroll at which Fame blushes!

Hazlitt, William

47.

Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being somebody, to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his over-animation. One can either see or be seen.

Updike, John

48.

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

49.

Men's fame is like their hair, which grows after they are dead, and with just as little use to them.

Villiers, George

50.

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.