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. 

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

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

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

He who treats another human being as divine thereby assigns to himself the relative status of a child or an animal.

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

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.

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

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

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

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

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.

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