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

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

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.

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

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

Fame is no sanctuary from the passing of youth. Suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully.

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. 

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

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

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

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.

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