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

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.

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

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

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

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

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!

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

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

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

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.

I am sick and tired of publicity. I want no more of it. It puts me in a bad light. I just want to be forgotten.