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.

A woman’s greatest glory is to be little talked about by men, whether for good or ill.

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

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

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

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

They are trying to make me into a fixed star. I am an irregular planet.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.