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

I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

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.

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

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

I am sick and tired of publicity. I want no more of it. It puts me in a bad light. I just want to be forgotten.

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!

Being 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.

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.

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

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

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.