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

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

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

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

Fame is no sanctuary from the passing of youth. Suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully.

Avoid 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.

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.

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

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

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

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. 

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

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