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

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

He who treats another human being as divine thereby assigns to himself the relative status of a child or an animal.

All people have the common desire to be elevated in honor, but all people have something still more elevated in themselves without knowing it.

How sweet it is to have people point and say, “There he is.”

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

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

When I do a show, the whole show revolves around me, and if I don’t show up, they can just forget it.

There lurks in every human heart a desire of distinction which inclines every man first to hope and then to believe that nature has given him something peculiar to himself. 

Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury—to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.

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

And what will history say of me a thousand years hence?

Most authors seek fame, but I seek for justice—a holier impulse than ever entered into the ambitious struggles of the votaries of that fickle, flirting goddess.