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.

I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

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!

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

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

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