Fame! that common crier. [ J. Adams ]

Fame is a magnifying glass. [ Proverb ]

Go where glory waits thee;
But while fame elates thee,
Oh! still remember me. [ Moore ]

To many fame comes too late. [ Camoens ]

Fame is the thirst of youth. [ Byron ]

There are many ways to fame. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Common fame is seldom to blame. [ Proverb ]

The breath of popular applause. [ Herrick ]

I'll make thee famous by my pen
And glorious by my sword. [ Marquis of Montrose ]

I see my reputation is at stake:
My fame is shrewdly gored. [ William Shakespeare ]

To myself alone do I owe my fame. [ Corneille ]

Fame - next grandest word to God! [ Alexander Smith ]

I hate the man who builds his name
On ruins of another's fame. [ Gay ]

Fame is a thin shadow of eternity. [ Proverb ]

Fame is in the keeping of the mob. [ Proverb ]

Folly loves the martyrdom of fame. [ Byron ]

For virtue only finds eternal fame. [ Petrarch ]

Fame and censure with a tether
By fate are always linked together. [ Swift ]

Around the mighty master came
The marvels which his pencil wrought
Those miracles of power whose fame
Is wide as human thought. [ Whittier ]

What is glory? what is fame?
The echo of a long-lost name;
A breath, an idle hour's brief talk;
The shadow of an arrant naught;
A flower that blossoms for a day.
Dying next morrow;
A stream that hurries on its way.
Singing of sorrow. [ Motherwell ]

Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds. [ Socrates ]

What shall I do to be forever known,
And make the age to come my own? [ Cowley ]

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
The soldier's last tattoo;
No more on Life's parade shall meet
The brave and fallen few.
On Fame's eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread.
And Glory guards, with solemn round
The bivouac of the dead. [ Theodore O'Hara ]

Song forbids victorious deeds to die. [ Schiller ]

Deathless laurel is the victor's due. [ Dryden ]

To extend one's fame by valiant feats. [ Virgil ]

Grant me honest fame or grant me none. [ Pope ]

Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame?
A fitful tongue of leaping flame:
A giddy whirlwind's fickle gust,
That lifts a pinch of mortal dust;
A few swift years, and who can show,
Which dust was Bill, and which was Joe? [ O. W. Holmes ]

Fame is the breath of popular applause. [ Herrick ]

A good fame is better than a good face. [ Proverb ]

The noblest spur unto the sons of fame.
Is thirst of honour. [ John Hall ]

Remember aye, the ocean deeps are mute.
The shallows roar;
Worth is the ocean - fame the bruit
Along the shore. [ Johann C. F. Von Schiller ]

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame. [ Milton on Shakespeare ]

For what is glory but the blaze of fame? [ Milton ]

Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name. [ Scott ]

Ambition has but one reward tor all:
A little power, a little transient fame,
A grave to rest in, and a fading name! [ William Winter ]

Vile is the vengeance on the ashes cold,
And envy base to bark at sleeping fame. [ Spenser ]

A fool to pleasure, yet a slave to fame. [ Pope ]

Fame - a flower upon a dead man's heart. [ Motherwell ]

Common fame hath a blister on its tongue. [ Proverb ]

From the great,
Illustrious actions are a debt to Fame.
No middle path remains for them to tread,
Whom she hath once ennobled. [ Glover ]

Fame is a fancied life in others' breath. [ Pope ]

Integrity of life is fame's best .friend. [ John Webster ]

The greatest can but blaze and pass away. [ Pope ]

Short is my date, but deathless my renown. [ Homer ]

With fame, in just proportion, envy grows. [ Young ]

Notoriety is short-lived; fame is lasting. [ Bancroft ]

Seven cities warred for Homer being dead,
Who living had no roof to shroud his head. [ Thos. Heywood ]

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil. [ Milton ]

The love of fame gives an immense stimulus. [ Ovid ]

She comes unlooked for if she comes at all. [ Pope ]

Fame, the sovereign deity of proud ambition. [ Sheridan ]

Of all the phantoms fleeting in the mist
Of time, though meagre all and ghostly thin;
Most unsubstantial, unessential shade
Was earthly fame. [ Pollok ]

He left a name at which the world grew pale.
To point a moral, or adorn a tale. [ Dr. Johnson ]

One to destroy is murder by the law.
And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe;
To murder thousands takes a specious name.
War's glorious art, and gives immortal fame. [ Young ]

It deserves with characters of brass,
A forted residence against the tooth of time
And razure of oblivion. [ William Shakespeare ]

I awoke one morning and found myself famous. [ Byron ]

A woman's fame is the tomb of her happiness. [ L. E. Landon ]

Then shall our names
Familiar in his mouth as household words.
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered. [ William Shakespeare ]

Raised by fortune to a ridiculous visibility. [ Grattan ]

If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined,
The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind;
Or, ravished with the whistling of a name,
See Cromwell, damned to everlasting fame! [ Pope ]

Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives.
Live registered upon our brazen tombs. [ William Shakespeare ]

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame. [ Pope ]

Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame,
Do good by stealth, and blush to find it Fame. [ Pope ]

He lives in fame, that died in virtue's cause. [ William Shakespeare ]

Eternal Spirit of the chainless mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art.
For there thy habitation is the Heart -
The Heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned -
To fetters and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their Martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. [ Byron ]

Celebrity sells dearly what we think she gives. [ Emile Souvestre ]

The best-concerted schemes men lay for fame.
Die fast away; only themselves die faster.
The far-famed sculptor, and the laurelled bard,
Those bold insurancers of deathless fame,
Supply their little feeble aids in vain. [ Blair ]

May see thee now, though late, redeem thy name.
And glorify what else is damned to fame. [ Richard Savage ]

To serve thy generation, this thy fate:
Written in- water, swiftly fades thy name;
But he who loves his kind does, first and late,
A work too great for fame. [ Mary Clemmer ]

Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar? [ Beattie ]

Fame must necessarily be the portion of but few. [ Robert Hall ]

What rage for fame attends both great and small!
Better be damned than mentioned not at all. [ John Wolcott ]

Fame points the course, and glory leads the way. [ Pye ]

And glory long has made the sages smile;
It is something, nothing, words, illusion, wind -
Depending more upon the historian's style
Than on the name a person leaves behind. [ Byron ]

Fame sometimes hath created something of nothing. [ Fuller ]

Even the best things are not equal to their fame. [ Thoreau ]

What is fame? A fancied life in anothers' breath. [ Pope ]

Sloth views the towers of fame with envious eyes.
Desirous still, still impotent to rise. [ Shenstone ]

Honesty is a warrant of far more safety than fame. [ Owen Feltham ]

Had doting Priam checked his son's desire,
Troy had been bright with fame, and not with fire. [ William Shakespeare ]

There is a different fame goes about of every man. [ Proverb ]

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise,
(That last infirmity of noble minds,)
To scorn delights and live laborious days. [ Milton ]

Fame is not won on downy plumes nor under canopies. [ Dante ]

Avarice is the miser's dream, as fame is the poet's. [ Hazlitt ]

All fame is dangerous: good, brings Envy; bad, shame. [ Proverb ]

I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety. [ William Shakespeare ]

What of them is left, to tell
Where they lie, and how they fell?
Not a stone on their turf, nor a bone in their graves:
But they live in the Verse that immortally saves. [ Byron ]

Let us weep in our darkness - but weep not for him!
Not for him - who, departing, leaves millions in tears!
Not for him - who has died full of honor and years!
Not for him - who ascended Fame's ladder so high.
From the round at the top he has stepped to the sky. [ N. P. Willis ]

The lust of fame is the last that a wise man shakes off. [ Tac ]

Fame is the shame of immortality, and is itself a shadow. [ Young ]

Oblivion is the rule, and fame the exception, of humanity. [ Rivarol ]

He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first. [ Voltaire ]

Fame can never make us lie down contentedly on a death-bed. [ Pope ]

Death openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy. [ Bacon ]

If fame is only to come after death, I am in no hurry for it. [ Martial ]

What a heavy burden is a name that has become too soon famous! [ Voltaire ]

He that will sell his fame will also sell the public interest. [ Solon ]

And yet, after all, what is posthumous fame? Altogether vanity. [ Antoninus ]

Not fame, but that which it merits, is what a man should esteem. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]

Many a man of fame hath been beholden to fortune for his laurel. [ Proverb ]

Only the actions of the just smell sweet and blossom in the dust. [ James Shirley ]

Who despises fame will soon renounce the virtues that deserve it. [ Mallet ]

Fame is but the breath of the people, and that often unwholesome. [ Proverb ]

The love of fame is the last weakness which even the wise resign. [ Tacitus ]

Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water. [ William Shakespeare ]

Avoid shame, but do not seek glory: nothing so expensive as glory. [ Sydney Smith ]

He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure.
The dread of censure is the death of genius. [ Simms ]

Though fame is smoke, its fumes are frankincense to human thoughts. [ Byron ]

A man may be happy here and hereafter, without much fame or wealth. [ Proverb ]

Fame! it is the flower of a day, that dies when the next sun rises. [ Ouida ]

That man lives greatly, whatever his fate or fame, who greatly dies. [ Young ]

Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent. [ Chamfort ]

Naked glory is the true and honorable recompense of gallant actions. [ Le Sage ]

The way to fame, is like the way to heaven, through much tribulation. [ Sterne ]

Many have lived on a pedestal who will never have a statue when dead. [ Beranger ]

Fame has eagle wings, and yet she mounts not so high as man's desires. [ Beaconsfield ]

Money will buy money's worth: but the thing men call fame, what is it? [ Carlyle ]

Unlike the sun, intellectual luminaries shine brightest after they set. [ Colton ]

She is best who is least spoken of among men, whether for good or evil. [ Pericles ]

Honours encourage the arts, for all are incited towards studies by fame. [ Cicero ]

To have fame follow us is well, but it is not a desirable avant-courier. [ Balzac ]

Of all kinds of ambition, that which pursues poetical fame is the wildest. [ Goldsmith ]

Fame at its best is but a poor compensation for all the ills of existence. [ Mrs. Oliphant ]

A few words upon a tombstone, and the truth of those not to be depended on. [ Bovee ]

Rash combat oft immortalizes man. If he should fall, he is renowned in song. [ Goethe ]

None despise fame more heartily than those who have no possible claim to it. [ J. Petit-Senn ]

The world knows the worst of me, and I can say that I am better than my fame. [ Schiller ]

If thou modestly enjoy thy fame, thou art not unworthy to rank with the holy. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

The drying up a single tear has more of honest fame than shedding seas of gore. [ Byron ]

What is the end of fame? It is but to fill a certain portion of uncertain paper. [ Byron ]

Many actions calculated to procure fame are not conducive to ultimate happiness. [ Addison ]

Fame only reflects the estimate in which a man is held in comparison with others. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]

As yet a child, not yet a fool to fame, I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. [ Pope ]

He that would have his virtue published is not the servant of virtue, but of glory. [ Ben Jonson ]

The fame of great men ought always to be estimated by the means used to acquire it. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

It often happens that those of whom we speak least on earth are best known in heaven. [ N. Caussin ]

He that gives himself leave to play with his neighbour's fame, may soon play it away. [ Proverb ]

No one would ever meet death in defence of his country without the hope of immortality. [ Cicero ]

Death makes no conquest of this conqueror; For now he lives in Fame, though not in life. [ William Shakespeare ]

It is pleasing to be pointed at with the finger and to have it said, There goes the man. [ Persius ]

Fame lulls the fever of the soul, and makes us feel that we have grasped an immortality. [ Joaquin Miller ]

Better than fame is still the wish for fame, the constant training for a glorious strife. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]

Fame comes only when deserved, and then it is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Never get a reputation for a small perfection if you are trying for fame in a loftier area. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; riches take wings; the only certainty is oblivion. [ Horace Greeley ]

The aspiring youth that fired the Ephesian dome outlives in fame the pious fool that raised it. [ Colley Gibber ]

Wisdom is neither gold, nor silver, nor fame, nor wealth, nor health, nor strength, nor beauty. [ Plutarch ]

No true and permanent fame can be founded, except in labors which promote the happiness of mankind. [ Charles Sumner ]

For everything divine and human, virtue, fame and honor, now obey the alluring influence of riches. [ Horace ]

Men's fame is like their hair, which grows after they are dead, and with just as little use to them. [ George Villiers ]

The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame. [ Hazlitt ]

Mere family never made a man great. Thought and deed, not pedigree, are the passports to enduring fame. [ Skobeleff ]

The splendors that belong unto the fame of earth are but a wind, that in the same direction lasts not long. [ Dante ]

As the pearl ripens in the obscurity of its shell, so ripens in the tomb all the fame that is truly precious. [ Landor ]

I have learned to prize the quiet, lightning deed, not the applauding thunder at its heels that men call fame. [ A. Smith ]

The thirst after fame is greater than that after virtue; for who embraces virtue if you take away its rewards? [ Juvenal ]

Men have a solicitude about fame; and the greater share they have of it, the more afraid they are of losing it. [ Johnson ]

Fame, they tell you, is air; but without air there is no life for any; without fame there is none for the best. [ Landor ]

Scarcely two hundred years back can Fame recollect articulately at all; and there she but maunders and mumbles. [ Carlyle ]

The thirst for fame is greater than that for virtue; for, if you take away its reward, who would embrace virtue? [ Juvenal, Roman Poet ]

Time magnifies everything after death; a man's fame is increased as it passes from mouth to mouth after his burial. [ Propertius ]

Time is, after all, the greatest of poets; and the sons of Memory stand a better chance of being the heirs of Fame. [ Lowell ]

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing. [ Benjamin Franklin ]

The temple of fame stands upon the grave; the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of dead men. [ Hazlitt ]

Men think highly of those who rise rapidly in the world; whereas nothing rises quicker than dust, straw, and feathers. [ Hare ]

Of all the rewards of virtue, the most splendid is fame, for it is fame alone that can offer us the memory of posterity. [ Cicero ]

What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing, and for whom you care as little. [ Stanislaus ]

Fame and admiration weigh not a feather in the scale against friendship and love, for the heart languishes all the same. [ George Sand ]

Of all the possessions of this life fame is the noblest; when the body has sunk into the dust the great name still lives. [ Schiller ]

Genius inspires this thirst for fame: there is no blessing undesired by those to whom Heaven gave the means of winning it. [ Mme. de Stael ]

If thou wilt receive profit, read with humility, simplicity, and faith: and seek not at any time the fame of being learned. [ Thomas a Kempis ]

A good book is fruitful of other books; it perpetuates its fame from age to age, and makes eras in the lives of its readers. [ Alcott ]

Your fame is as the grass, whose hue comes and goes, and His might withers it by whose power it sprang from the lap of the earth. [ Dante ]

An enduring fame is one stamped by the judgment of the future, - that future which dispels illusions, and smashes idols into dust. [ Gladstone ]

Be not liquorish after fame, found by experience to carry a trumpet, that doth for the most part congregate more enemies than friends. [ Osborn ]

In fame's temple there is always a niche to be found for rich dunces, importunate scoundrels, or successful butchers of the human race. [ Zimmermann ]

Fame, as a river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off; so exemplary writers depend not upon the gratitude of the world. [ Sir W. Davenant ]

The love of fame is a passion natural and universal, which no man, however high or mean, however wise or ignorant, was yet able to despise. [ Dr. Johnson ]

In the career of female fame, there are few prizes to be obtained which can vie with the obscure state of a beloved wife or a happy mother. [ Jane Porter ]

The Duke of Wellington brought to the post of first minister immortal fame; a quality of success which would almost seem to include all others. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]

Glory relaxes often and debilitates the mind; censure stimulates and contracts - both to an extreme. Simple fame is, perhaps, the proper medium. [ Shenstone ]

None of the projects or designs which exercise the mind of man are equally subject to obstructions and disappointments with the pursuit of fame. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck only at one end of a room, it will soon fall to the floor. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends. [ Johnson ]

Fame may be compared to a scold; the best way to silence her is to let her alone, and she will at last be out of breath in blowing her own trumpet. [ Fuller ]

The only pleasure of fame is that it proves the way to pleasure; and the more intellectual our pleasure, the better for the pleasure and for us too. [ Byron ]

Garments will fall to pieces, jewels and gold will lose something of their lustre, but the fame that great poems acquire will last through all time. [ Ovid ]

Fame is an undertaker that pays but little attention to the living, but bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals, and follows them to the grave. [ Colton ]

Fame is the echo of actions, resounding them to the world, save that the echo repeats only the last part; but fame relates all, and often more than all. [ Thomas Fuller ]

Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else; very rarely to those who say to themselves, Go to now, let us be a celebrated individual. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]

Death opens the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it; it unlooses the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman's task into another man's hand. [ Sterne ]

Exploding many things under the name of trifles is a very false proof either of wisdom or magnanimity, and a great check to virtuous actions with regard to fame. [ Swift ]

When Fame stands by us all alone, she is an angel clad in light and strength; but when Love touches her she drops her sword, and fades away, ghostlike and ashamed. [ Ouida ]

The seven wise men of Greece, so famous for their wisdom all the world over, acquired all that fame, each of them, by a single sentence consisting of two or three words. [ South ]

There is no employment in the world so laborious as that of making to one's self a great name; life ends before one has scarcely made the first rough draught of his work. [ Bruyere ]

The fame which bids fair to live the longest resembles that which Horace attributes to Marcellus, whose progress he compares to the silent, imperceptible growth of a tree. [ W. B. Clulow ]

Fame is not won on downy plumes nor under canopies; the man who consumes his days without obtaining it leaves such mark of himself on earth as smoke in air or foam on water. [ Dante ]

Were not this desire of fame very strong, the difficulty of obtaining it, and the danger of losing it when obtained, would be sufficient to deter a man from so vain a pursuit. [ Addison ]

It is not without reason that fame is awarded only after death. The cloud-dust of notoriety which follows and envelops the men who drive with the wind bewilders contemporary judgment. [ Lowell ]

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 ]

It is the penalty of fame that a man must ever keep rising. Get a reputation and then go to bed, is the absurdest of all maxims. Keep up a reputation or go to bed, would be nearer the truth. [ Chapin ]

Common fame is the only liar that deserveth to have some respect still reserved to it: though she telleth many an untruth, she often hits right, and most especially when she speaketh ill of men. [ Saville ]

Some men's censures are like the blasts of rams horns before the walls of Jericho; all a man's fame they lay level at one stroke, when all they go upon is only conceit, without any certain basis. [ J. Beaumont ]

Fame confers a rank above that of gentleman and of kings. As soon as she issues her patent of nobility, it matters not a straw whether the recipient be the son of a Bourbon or of it tallow-chandler. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]

Fame is a good so wholly foreign to our natures that we have no faculty in the soul adapted to it, nor any organ in the body to relish it; an object of desire placed out of the possibility of fruition. [ Addison ]

It is more reasonable to wish for reputation while it may be enjoyed, as Anacreon calls upon his companions to give him for present use the wine and garlands which they propose to bestow upon his tomb. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Valor and power may gain a lasting memory, but where are they when the brave and mighty are departed? Their effects may remain, but they live not in them any more than the fire in the work of the potter. [ Hartley Coleridge ]

Among the writers of all ages, some deserve fame, and have it; others neither have nor deserve it; some have it, not deserving it; others, though deserving it, yet totally miss it,, or have it not equal to their deserts. [ Milton ]

Time has a doomsday book, upon whose pages he is continually recording illustrious names. But as often as a new name is written there, an old one disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated characters never to be effaced. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Those who despise fame seldom deserve it. We are apt to undervalue the purchase we cannot reach, to conceal our poverty the better. It is a spark which kindles upon the best fuel, and burns brightest in the bravest breast. [ Jeremy Collier ]

Fame often rests at first upon something accidental, and often, too, is swept away, or for a time removed; but neither genius nor glory is conferred at once, nor do they glimmer and fall, like drops in a grotto, at a shout. [ Landor ]

The desire of posthumous fame and the dread of posthumous reproach and execration are feelings from the influence of which scarcely any man is perfectly free, and which in many men are powerful and constant motives of action. [ Macaulay ]

If opinion hath lighted the lamp of thy name, endeavor to encourage it with thy own oil, lest it go out and stink; the chronical disease of popularity is shame: if thou be once up, beware: from fame to infamy is a beaten road. [ Quarles ]

Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity, who drink of that flood of glory as of a river, and refresh our wings in it for future flight. [ Hazlitt ]

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 ]

There is a certain virtue in every good man, which night and day stirs up the mind with the stimulus of glory, and reminds it that all mention of our name will not cease at the same time with our lives, but that our fame will endure to all posterity. [ Cicero ]

How many who, after having achieved fame and fortune, recall with regret the time when - ascending the hills of life in the sun of their twentieth year - they had nothing but courage, which is the virtue of the young, and hope, which is the treasure of the poor! [ H. Murger ]

Fame is a revenue payable only to our ghosts; and to deny ourselves all present satisfaction, or to expose ourselves to so much hazard for this, were as great madness as to starve ourselves, or fight desperately for food, to be laid on our tombs after our death. [ Mackenzie ]

Bright and illustrious illusions! Who can blame, who laugh at the boy, who not admire and commend him, for that desire of a fame outlasting the Pyramids by which he insensibly learns to live in a life beyond the present, and nourish dreams of a good unattainable by the senses? [ Bulwer-Lytton ]

How idle a boast, after all, is the immortality of a name! Time is ever silently turning over his pages; we are too much engrossed by the story of the present to think of the character and anecdotes that gave interest to the past; and each age is a volume thrown aside and forgotten. [ Washington Irving ]

What a wretched thing is all fame! A renown of the highest sort endures, say, for two thousand years. And then? Why, then, a fathomless eternity swallows it. Work for eternity: not the meagre rhetorical eternity of the periodical critics, but for the real eternity, wherein dwelleth the Divine. [ Carlyle ]

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 commonsense would invest any large amount of hope in so unpromising a lottery? [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

There is nothing more necessary to establish reputation than to suspend the enjoyment of it. He that cannot bear the sense of merit with silence must of necessity destroy it; for fame being the genial mistress of mankind, whoever gives it to himself insults all to whom he relates any circumstance to his own advantage. [ Steele ]

Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given; often it is but a false glare, dazzling the eyes of the vulgar, lending, by casual extrinsic splendour, the brightness and manifold glance of the diamond to pebbles of no value. [ Carlyle ]

As monarchs have a right to call in the specie of a state, and raise its value, by their own impression; so are there certain prerogative geniuses, who are above plagiaries, who cannot be said to steal, but, from their improvement of a thought, rather to borrow it, and repay the commonwealth of letters with interest again; and may more properly be said to adopt, than to kidnap a sentiment, by leaving it heir to their own fame. [ Sterne ]