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

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.

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

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

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

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

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

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

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

Now there is fame! Of all—hunger, misery, the incomprehension by the public—fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation by God of the artist. It is sad. It is true.

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.

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. 

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