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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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!

If fame is only to come after death, I am in no hurry for it.

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

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

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.

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