"What is fame?
Fame is but a slow decay—
Even this shall pass away."
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.
I tell no secret when I repeat that fame and reputation are much a matter of luck and chance.
How dearly, at one time, and how cheaply at another, does Genius purchase immortal fame!
To copy beauties, forfeits all pretence
To fame—to copy faults, is want of sense.
My fame had become annoying for my enemies, and a little trying, I confess, for my friends.
When Fame, O monarch! good or evil tells,
Evil or good beyond the truth she swells.
I find fame to be quite unnatural. Humans are not built for extreme adoration.