quotations about fame
Being famous is like having a string of pearls given to you: it's nice, but after a while it's only to wonder if they're real or cultured.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
attributed, Forbes, 1961
If any youth is desirous to raise himself to the topmost rung in the ladder of fame, and make his position there permanent, he must begin by honoring his parents; have an earnest and undying love for truth, steady perseverance, and implicit and childlike faith in Him who is the fountain-head of every good and perfect gift. By these means, and these alone, can be hope to leave behind him a name that shall be immortal, and a beacon to guide other pilgrims to the ladder's top. It is in the power of every human being to be great in some way, and although the whole world may not ring with their fame, those who were nearest and dearest to them know what they were; and many a humble peasant on earth will be a prince in Heaven, and many a lowly cottage maid will be a queen in glory.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On Fame", Short Essays
I think fame itself is not a rewarding thing. The most you can say is that it gets you a seat in restaurants.
DAVID BOWIE
interview, Q Magazine, April 1990
Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity, who drink of that flood of glory as of a river, and refresh our wings in it for future flight.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
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.
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
Last of the Barons
Name and fame! to fly sublime
Through the courts, the camps, the schools
Is to be the ball of Time,
Bandied in the hands of fools.
ALFRED TENNYSON
The Vision of Sin
Fame grows like a tree if it have the principle of growth in it; the accumulated dews of ages freshen its leaves.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
O Fame! A bubble on life's wave,
'Tis tossed about, a worthless thing;
The bubble breaks--'tis lost for aye,
But leaves on heart a poignant sting....
You cut your name on granit block;
As ages come and pass away,
Disintegrated is the stone,
For all in nature must decay.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
Thoughts
That sort of reputation which precedes performance [is] often the larger part of a man's fame.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
Well, there was a time I would have
Hung around just to be seen
Hey man, it's a shame when you start to fade
Diamond rings and sparkly things
Won't make your shine stay
SHERYL CROW
"Superstar"
Stardom isn't a profession; it's an accident.
LAUREN BACALL
attributed, The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations
Fame should be depicted covered with tongues instead of with feathers and in the form of a bird.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Famous people don't want to be told that you have a quality in common with them. It makes them think there's something crawling in their clothes.
DON DELILLO
Underworld
The fame of heroes owes little to the extent of their conquests and all to the success of the tributes paid to them.
JEAN GENET
Prisoner of Love
Fame is nothing but an empty name.
CHARLES CHURCHILL
The Ghost
Fame is a four-letter word; and like tape or zoom or face or pain or life or love, what ultimately matters is what we do with it.
FRED ROGERS
speech at his induction into the Television Hall of Fame, Feb. 1999
A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
DANIEL J. BOORSTIN
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.
JOHN MILTON
Lycidas
Fame is like a great white angel, who points you up to a cold, sparkling, solitary mountain-top away from the world, and bids you stay there alone, with the chill stars shining down on you. And people look up at you and pass; you are too far off for the clasp of friendship; you are too isolated for the caress of love; and your enemies, unable to touch you, stare insolently, smile and cry aloud, "So you have climbed the summit at last! Well, much good may it do you! Stay there, live there, and die there, as you must, alone forever!"
TERESA RANSOM
The Mysterious Miss Marie Corelli
I cannot believe that any man who deserved fame ever labored for it; that is, directly. For, as fame is but the contingent of excellence, it would be like an attempt to project a shadow, before its substance was obtained.
WASHINGTON ALLSTON
Lectures on Art and Poems