Fame Quotes
Pope leads, followed by Shakespeare, Homer, Edward Young and Virgil, which is about right for a topic that was a poet’s favourite for centuries. The sourced lines are short. Milton’s Lycidas (1637) says fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil; Byron’s Monody on the Death of Sheridan (1816) says folly loves the martyrdom of fame; and Swift, in 1711, calls censure the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
Flagged: a passage on living for something and leaving a monument of virtue, credited to Thomas Chalmers, is marked misattributed, and two Dryden passages, one about artists working for better fame and one about a poet’s chance of success, are disputed.
Men the most infamous are fond of fame,
And those who fear not guilt yet start at shame.
There's not a thing on Earth, that I can name,
So foolish, and so false, as common fame.
A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
What shall I do to be forever known,
And make the age to come my own?
Fame is not creativity, it’s the industrial disease of creativity.
The aspiring youth that fired the Ephesian dome
Outlives in fame the pious fool that rais'd it.
Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame’s proud temple shines afar?
Fame is a food that dead men eat,—
I have no stomach for such meat.
May see thee now, though late, redeem thy name,
And glorify what else is damn'd to fame.
No true and permanent Fame can be founded except in labors which promote the happiness of mankind.