What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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. 

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!

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.