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

And what will history say of me a thousand years hence?

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

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.

When I do a show, the whole show revolves around me, and if I don’t show up, they can just forget it.

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

Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experienced, but that’s not where I live.

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

Happy is the man who hath never known what it is to taste of fame—to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a hell!

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.

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.

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

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