Renown Quotes - Page 2

• Fame requires every kind of excess. I mean true fame, a devouring neon, not the sombre renown of waning statesmen or chinless kings.

  Don DeLillo

  Kings, Mean, Excess

  Don DeLillo (2011). “Great Jones Street”, p.4, Pan Macmillan

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• He who will please the crowd and for the sake of the most ephemeral renown will either proclaim those things which nature does not display or even will publish genuine miracles of nature without regard to deeper causes is a spiritually corrupt person... With the best of intentions I publicly speak to the crowd (which is eager for things new) on the subject of what is to come.

  Johannes Kepler

  Miracle, Doe, Crowds

  Foreword in "De fundamentis astrologiae certioribus" by Johannes Kepler, 1601.

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• Only to two or three persons in all the world are the reminiscences of a man's early youth interesting: to the parent who nursed him; to the fond wife or child mayhap afterwards who loves him; to himself always and supremely--whatever may be his actual prosperity or ill fortune, his present age, illness, difficulties, renown, or disappointments--the dawn of his life still shines brightly for him, the early griefs and delights and attachments remain with him ever faithful and dear.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Children, Disappointment, Grief

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• Who, for the poor renown of being smart, Would leave a sting within a brother's heart?

  Edward Young

  Brother, Smart, Heart

  Edward Young, John Doran, James Nichols (1854). “The Complete Works, Poetry and Prose of the Rev. Edward Young, LL.D.: Revised and Collated with the Earliest Editions. To which is Prefixed A Life of the Author”, p.358

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• Wood burns because it has the proper stuff for that purpose in it; and a man becomes renowned because he has the necessary stuff in him. Renown is not to be sought, and all pursuit of it is vain. A person may, indeed, by skillful conduct and various artificial means, make a sort of name for himself; but if the inner jewel is wanting, all is vanity, and will not last a day.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Mean, Men, Vanity

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann, Frédéric Jacob Soret (1850). “Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret”, p.103

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• The melancholy ghosts of dead renown, Whispering faint echoes of the world's applause.

  Edward Young

  Echoes, Whispering, World

  Edward Young (1824). “The Complaint; Or, Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality”, p.227

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• The highest greatness, surviving time and stone, is that which proceeds from the soul of man. Monarchs and cabinets, generals and admirals, with the pomp of court and the circumstance of war, in the lapse of time disappear from sight; but the pioneers of truth, though poor and lowly, especially those whose example elevates human nature, and teaches the rights of man, so that "a government of the people, by the people, for the people, may not perish from the earth;" such a harbinger can never be forgotten, and their renown spreads co-extensive with the cause they served so well.

  Charles Sumner

  War, Greatness, Men

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• Christopher Carson, whose renown as Kit Carson has reached almost every ear in the country was born in Madison county, Kentucky, on the 24th of December, 1809.

  John Stevens Cabot Abbott

  Country, Book, Kentucky

  John Stevens Cabot Abbott (1873). “Christopher Carson: Familiarly Known as Kit Carson”, p.9

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• Even when I'm railed at, I get my quota of renown.

  Pietro Aretino

  Quota

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• When first the college rolls receive his name,
  The young enthusiast quilts his ease for fame;
  Through all his veins the fever of renown
  Burns from the strong contagion of the gown

  Samuel Johnson

  Education, Strong, Quilts

  Samuel Johnson, “The Vanity Of Human Wishes”

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• If not for that of conscience, yet at least for ambition's sake, let us reject ambition, let us disdain that thirst of honor and renown, so low and mendicant; that it makes us beg it of all sorts of people.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Ambition, People, Honor

  Michel de Montaigne (2013). “Michel de Montaigne: Selected Essays”, p.205, Courier Corporation

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• 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.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Real, Years, Two

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• Virtue is increased by the smile of approval; and the love of renown is the greatest incentive to honourable acts.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Incentives, Approval, Virtue

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• Some crimes get honor and renown by being committed with more pomp, by a greater number, and in a higher degree of wickedness thanothers. Hence it is that public robberies, plunderings, and sackings have been looked upon as excellencies and noble achievements, and the seizing of whole countries, however unjustly and barbarously, is dignified with the glorious name of gaining conquests.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Country, Names, Numbers

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• Arjuna is a warrior of great renown, says he won't fight. He tells Krishna: I can't fight because I love these people. It's immoral. It's unjust. There's no winning.

  Frederick Lenz

  Karma, Yoga, Fighting

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• The glorious memory of brave men is continually renewed; the fame of those who have performed any noble deed is never allowed to die; and the renown of those who have done good service to their country becomes a matter of common knowledge to the multitude, and part of the heritage of posterity.

  Polybius

  Country, Memories, Men

  Polybius, Friedrich Hultsch (1889). “The Histories”

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• Natural ability is by far the best, but many men have succeeded in winning high renown by skill that is the fruit of teaching.

  Pindar

  Teacher, Teaching, Winning

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• Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd, As home his footsteps he hath turn'd From wandering on a foreign strand! If such there breathe, go mark him well; For him no Minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonor'd, and unsung.

  Walter Scott

  Home, Heart, Men

  Sir Walter Scott (1873). “Poetical Works”, p.42

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• NOTORIETY, n. The fame of one's competitor for public honors. The kind of renown most accessible and acceptable to mediocrity. A Jacob's-ladder leading to the vaudeville stage, with angels ascending and descending.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Leadership, Kindness, Angel

  Ambrose Bierce (2012). “The Devil's Dictionary”, p.85, Courier Corporation

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• And no renown can render you well-known:
  For if you think that fame can lengthen life
  By mortal famousness immortalized,
  The day will come that takes your fame as well,
  And there a second death for you awaits.

  Boethius

  Thinking, Fame, Well Known

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• All your renown is like the summer flower that blooms and dies; because the sunny glow which brings it forth, soon slays with parching power.

  Dante Alighieri

  Summer, Flower, September

  Dante Alighieri, Claudia Hamilton Ramsay (1862). “Dante's Divina Commedia Translated Into English, in the Metre and Triple Rhyme of the Original with Notes by Ramsay: Purgatorio”, p.77

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• Her virtues, graced with external gifts, Do breed love's settled passions in my heart; And like as rigour of tempestuous gusts Provokes the mightiest hulk against the tide, So am I driven by breath of her renown Either to suffer shipwreck or arrive Where I may have fruition of her love.

  William Shakespeare

  Passion, Heart, Suffering

  William Shakespeare (1823). “The plays of William Shakspeare, pr. from the text of the corrected copies left by G. Steevens and E. Malone, with a selection of notes from the most eminent commentors by A. Chalmers”, p.343

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• He, who practices right, but in the hope of acquiring great renown, is very near to vice.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Practice, Vices, Virtue

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• He who wins a thousand common hearts is entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero.

  Washington Irving

  Hero, Heart, Winning

  Washington Irving (1834). “The Complete Works of Washington Irving in One Volume”, p.337

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• Science in England is not a profession: its cultivators are scarcely recognised even as a class. Our language itself contains no single term by which their occupation can be expressed. We borrow a foreign word [Savant] from another country whose high ambition it is to advance science, and whose deeper policy, in accord with more generous feelings, gives to the intellectual labourer reward and honour, in return for services which crown the nation with imperishable renown, and ultimately enrich the human race.

  Charles Babbage

  Country, Ambition, Science

  Charles Babbage (1851). “The Exposition of 1851; or, Views of the industry, the science, and the government of England”, p.189

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