They are trying to make me into a fixed star. I am an irregular planet.
—Martin Luther, c. 1530Quotes
Men are generally more pleased with a widespread than with a great reputation.
—Pliny the Younger, c. 110We all have a contract with the public—in us they see themselves, or what they would like to be.
—Clark Gable, 1935What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.
—Voltaire, 1723He who treats another human being as divine thereby assigns to himself the relative status of a child or an animal.
—E. R. Dodds, 1951Now there is fame! Of all—hunger, misery, the incomprehension by the public—fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation by God of the artist. It is sad. It is true.
—Pablo Picasso, c. 1961Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906A woman’s greatest glory is to be little talked about by men, whether for good or ill.
—Pericles, c. 450 BCReality is always the foe of famous names.
—Petrarch, 1337Being 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.
—Sammy Davis Jr., 1965There 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.
—Samuel Johnson, 1763Avoid the talk of men. For talk is mischievous, light, and easily raised, but hard to bear and difficult to be rid of. Talk never wholly dies away when many people voice her: even talk is in some ways divine.
—Hesiod, c. 700 BCThose who know the joys and miseries of celebrities when they have passed the age of forty know how to defend themselves.
—Sarah Bernhardt, 1904