Reality is always the foe of famous names.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

If fame is only to come after death, I am in no hurry for it.

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it, and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

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.