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

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!

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

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

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.

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

Reality is always the foe of famous names.

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

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

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.

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. 

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