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.

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

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

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

What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.

Reality is always the foe of famous names.

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

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

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!

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

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

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 but the empty noise of madmen.