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

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

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

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

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

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.

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.

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

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

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. 

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.

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

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