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

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

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

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

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

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

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

Reality is always the foe of famous names.

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.

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.

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.