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

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

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.”

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.

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

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.

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

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. 

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

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

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

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