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.
There is a proud undying thought in man,
That bids his soul still upward look
To fame's proud cliff!
One who seeks fame and thereby loses his real self is no gentleman.
Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana; he is almost lost that built it.
Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.
Death makes no conquest of this conqueror:
For now he lives in fame, though not in life.
It is pleasing to be pointed at with the finger and to have it said, "There goes the man."
The love of fame is the last weakness which even the wise resign.
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
Men should press forward, in fame's glorious chase;
Nobles look backward, and so lose the race.