Archive

Quotes

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

—Aldous Huxley, 1925

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. 

—Samuel Johnson, 1763

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

—Pliny the Younger, c. 110

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

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, c. 1790

If fame is only to come after death, I am in no hurry for it.

—Martial, c. 86

How sweet it is to have people point and say, “There he is.”

—Persius, c. 60

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.

—Hesiod, c. 700 BC

Reality is always the foe of famous names.

—Petrarch, 1337

They are trying to make me into a fixed star. I am an irregular planet.

—Martin Luther, c. 1530

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

—Cato the Elder, c. 184 BC

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

—Madonna, c. 1985

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

—Voltaire, 1723

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.

—Davy Crockett, 1834