Few people make much noise after their deaths who did not do so while they were living. Posterity could not be supposed to rake into the records of past times for the illustrious obscure, and only ratify or annul the lists of great names handed down to them by the voice of common fame. Few people recover from the neglect or obloquy of their contemporaries. The public will hardly be at the pains to try the same cause twice over, or does not like to reverse its own sentence, at least when on the unfavorable side.—Hazlitt.
Celebrity sells dearly what we think she gives.—Emile Souvestre.
Fame has no necessary conjunction with praise; it may exist without the breath of a word: it is a recognition of excellence which must be felt, but need not be spoken. Even the envious must feel it; feel it, and hate in silence.—Washington Allston.
Many have lived on a pedestal who will never have a statue when dead.—Béranger.
I hope the day will never arrive when I shall neither be the object of calumny nor ridicule, for then I shall be neglected and forgotten.—Johnson.
A man who cannot win fame in his own age will have a very small chance of winning it from posterity. True there are some half dozen exceptions to this truth among millions of myriads that attest it; but what man of common sense would invest any large amount of hope in so unpromising a lottery.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Fame is the thirst of youth.—Byron.
Our admiration of a famous man lessens upon our nearer acquaintance with him; and we seldom hear of a celebrated person without a catalogue of some notorious weaknesses and infirmities.—Addison.
Even the best things are not equal to their fame.—Thoreau.
Fanaticism.—Fanaticism, to which men are so much inclined, has always served not only to render them more brutalized but more wicked.—Voltaire.