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

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

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.

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. 

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

Reality is always the foe of famous names.

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

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

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!

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

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