Archive

Quotes

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

—Aldous Huxley, 1925

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.

—Pablo Picasso, c. 1961

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

—Voltaire, 1723

Reality is always the foe of famous names.

—Petrarch, 1337

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!

—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1843

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

—Oscar Wilde, 1891

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

—Erasmus, 1515

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. 

—Samuel Johnson, 1763

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.

—Davy Crockett, 1834

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.

—Sammy Davis Jr., 1965

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

—Julie Burchill, 1986

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

—Madonna, c. 1985

We all have a contract with the public—in us they see themselves, or what they would like to be.

—Clark Gable, 1935