Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it, and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.

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!

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

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

All people have the common desire to be elevated in honor, but all people have something still more elevated in themselves without knowing it.

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.