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.

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.

FAMOUS, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue than why I have one.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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 is but the empty noise of madmen.