Sayings about Fame
The great scholar forgets about fame, the average scholar works for it, and the unworthy scholar steals it. ~ Chinese Proverbs
All kinds of fame belong partly to others. ~ Arabian Proverbs
Riches: a dream in the night. Fame: a gull floating on water. ~ Chinese Proverb
The palace leads to fame, the market to fortune, and loneliness to wisdom. ~ Chinese Proverb
It is foolish for someone to seek credit for his ancestor’s achievements. ~ Chinese Proverb
He who wants to be famous will have many a sleepless night. ~ Tunisian Proverb
Become famous, then go to sleep. ~ South American Proverb
Common fame seldom lies. ~ Dutch Proverbs
If you hold high office, the whole village will share your fame. ~ Vietnamese Proverbs
Quotations about Fame
Fame has eagle wings, and yet she mounts not so high as man’s desires. ~ Benjamin Disraeli
What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing, and for whom you care as little. ~ Leszczynski Stanislaus
The day will come when everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. ~ Andy Warhol
The love of the famous, like all strong passions, is quite abstract. Its intensity can be measured mathematically, and it is independent of persons. ~ Susan Sontag
The desire for fame tempts even noble minds. ~ St. Augustine
In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. ~ Andy Warhol
Even the best things are not equal to their fame. ~ Henry David Thoreau
We only serve as a model for the portrait of our fame. ~ Jean Cocteau
The fame you earn has a different taste from the fame that is forced upon you. ~ Gloria Vanderbilt
Fame is the thirst of youth. ~Lord Byron
Fame is an undertaker that pays but little attention to the living, but bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals, and follows them to the grave. ~ Charles Caleb Colton
Fame is the echo of actions, resounding them to the world, save that the echo repeats only the last part, but fame relates all, and often more than all. ~ Thomas Fuller
Fame hides her head among the clouds. ~ Virgil
A life without fame can be a good life, but fame without a life is no life at all. ~ Clive James
Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else. ~ Alan Bennett
In the past, one desired to acquire fame and to be talked about. But that is not sufficient anymore, because the market has grown too big — nothing less than screaming will do. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Fame is a food that dead men eat. ~ Henry Austin Dobson
Now there is fame! Of all — hunger, misery, the incomprehension by the public — fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation of God by the artist. It is sad. It is true. ~ Pablo Picasso
Fame has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it, we must direct our lives so as to please the fancy of men. ~ Baruch Benedict de Spinoza
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
Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else, very rarely to those who say to themselves, “Go to, now let us be a celebrated individual!” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
Fame is a bright flower, but weeds abound mostly around it. ~ Edward Counsel
Better than fame is still the wish for fame, the constant training for a glorious strife. ~ Baron Lytton
Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls. ~ Edmund Burke
What’s fame? a fancy’d life in other’s breath. A thing beyond us, even before our death. ~ Alexander Pope
Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. ~ Victor Hugo
The more well-known you are, you become a target. ~ Calvin Klein
Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars. ~ Fred A. Allen
Fame lightens labor. ~ Edward Counsel
Fame can never make us lie down contentedly on a deathbed. ~ Alexander Pope
Love of fame is the last thing even learned men can bear to be parted from. ~ Publius Cornelius Tacitus
The present condition of fame is merely fashion. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton
A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn’t know. ~ H. L. Mencken
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
Fame always brings loneliness. Success is as ice cold and lonely as the North Pole. ~ Vicki Baum
The difference between great celebrities and the unknown is the former failed and yet went at it again; the latter gave up in despair. ~ Author Unknown
Fame, like the river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off. ~ Sir William D’Avenant
Hollywood has always been a cage… a cage to catch our dreams. ~ John Huston
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil. ~ John Milton
The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time. ~ William Hazlitt
Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them. ~ Blaise Pascal
The highest form of vanity is love of fame. ~ George Santayana
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
To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten. ~ E. M. Cioran
The longer a man’s fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
There have been as great souls unknown to fame as any of the most famous. ~ Benjamin Franklin
Fame and fortune are as hard to find as a lightning strike. ~ P. N. Elrod
That sort of reputation which precedes performance [is] often the larger part of a man’s fame. ~ George Eliot
Fame is only good for one thing — they will cash your check in a small town. ~ Truman Capote
When you can do the common things in life in a uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world. ~ George Washington Carver
Fame is a constant effort. ~ Jules Renard
Fame is proof that people are gullible. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fame is a bee. It has a song, it has a sting. Ah, too, it has a wing. ~ Emily Dickinson
Fame is the beginning of the fall of greatness. ~ V. V. Rozanov
Fame is something that must be won. Honor is something that must not be lost. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
To many fame comes too late. ~ Luis De Camoens
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
Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well; and doing well whatever you do, without a thought of fame. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The love of fame is the last weakness which even the wise resign. ~ Publius Cornelius Tacitus
It is a wretched thing to live on the fame of others. ~ Juvenal
Fame and secrecy are the high and low ends of the same fascination. ~ Don Delillo
Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Fame or infamy, either one is preferable to being forgotten. ~ Christopher Paolini
No matter how much fame you have, it’s not something that belongs to you. If I’m famous, that doesn’t belong to me — that belongs to you. If you can’t remember who I am, I’m no longer famous. ~ Michael J . Fox
Fame is nothing but an empty name. ~ Charles Churchill
If fame is to come only after death, I am in no hurry for it. ~ Marcus Valerius Martial
Once you become famous, there is nothing left to become but infamous. ~ Don Johnson
Men’s fame is like their hair, which grows after they are dead, and with just as little use to them. ~ George Villiers
The light of the dawn is not so sweet as the first glimpses of fame. ~ Luc De Clapiers
Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property of a man. ~ Thomas Carlyle
The fame of great men ought to be judged always by the means they used to acquire it. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld
A celebrity is a person who works hard all of their life to become well known, and then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized. ~ Fred A. Allen
Fame must necessarily be the portion of but few. ~ Robert Hall
I awoke one morning and found myself famous. ~ Lord Byron
Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds. ~ Socrates
What a heavy burden is a name that has become famous too soon. ~ Voltaire
Fame sometimes hath created something of nothing. ~ Thomas Fuller
I am not concerned that I am not known, I seek to be worthy to be known. ~ Confucius
What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism. ~ Desiderius Erasmus
Each man has his appointed day: short and irreparable in the brief life of all, but to extend our fame by our deeds, this is the work of mankind. ~ Virgil
What desire for fame attends both great and small; better be damned than mentioned not at all! ~ John Wolcot
Fame is a form, perhaps the worst form, of incomprehension. ~ Jorge Luis Borges
It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour. ~ Lillian Hellman
How vain, without the merit, is the name. ~ Homer
Some people obtain fame, others deserve it. ~ Doris Lessing
