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

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

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

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.

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

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

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. 

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

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

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

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.

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.