Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

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 is no sanctuary from the passing of youth. Suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully.

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

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!

Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury—to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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