Men are generally more pleased with a widespread than with a great reputation.

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

Those who know the joys and miseries of celebrities when they have passed the age of forty know how to defend themselves.

Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, now that, and changes names as it changes in direction.

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. 

A woman’s greatest glory is to be little talked about by men, whether for good or ill.

I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue than why I have one.

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

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

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

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

We all have a contract with the public—in us they see themselves, or what they would like to be.

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.