The final test of fame is to have a crazy person imagine he is you.
Fame means absolutely nothing except a good table at a restaurant.
Essays „Of Death"
Above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is Nunc dimittis, when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expectations. Death hath this also, that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy.
Essays „Of Praise"
Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.
Fame is a bee
It has a song -
It has a sting -
Ah, too, it has a wing.
„Fame is a Food"
Fame is a food that dead men eat, -
I have no stomach for such meat.
Fame is a powerful aphrodisiac.
Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else.
The best fame is a writer's fame; it's enough to get a table at a good restaurant, but not enough that you get interrupted when you eat.
One must choose between Obscurity with
Efficiency, and Fame with its inevitable
collateral of Bluff.
„At the Top of my Voice" (translated by C.M. Bowra)
Deploying in a parade the armies of my pages,
I pass in review the front of my lines.
Verses stand lead-heavily, ready for death
and for immortal fame.
,,Lycidas"
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorrèd shears,
And slits the thin-spun life.
„Lycidas"
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.
Samson Agonistes
And though her body die, her fame survives,
A secular bird ages of lives.
All the fame I look for in life is to have lived it quietly.
Essays
Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.
,,Oh! blame not the bard"
Oh! blame not the bard, if he fly to the bowers,
Where Pleasure lies, carelessly smiling at Fame.
(to the Royal Acedemicians)
What rage for fame attends both great and small!
Better be damned than mentioned not at all!
The Dunciad
All crowd, who foremost shall be damned to Fame.
Rhodesian
A bull does not enjoy fame in two herds.
Fame is the sum of the misunderstanding that gathers about a new name.
Fame is something which must be won; honour is something which must not be lost.
Idylls of the King „Merlin and Vivien"
Man dreams of fame while woman wakes to love.
Fame is a vapour, popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.