Celebrity

“ The ruling inclination in me,—it has been a slight fault of mine ever since I was twenty years of age,—is to indulge in a private chuckle, and so I admire very little, and I rarely blame, and though I do not laugh outright, I laugh in my beard, for I have seen so much that I have learned to estimate events at their proper value, and I praise no celebrity till after he is dead;—I have made so many mistakes in paying my tribute of admiration to a living celebrity. ”

“ But the celebrity which is coveted by the man of a noble and generous spirit,—that estimable species of fame, which alone can survive such ephemera of error as are often engendered by the vanity of the individual and nurtured by the follies or vices of the many,—must ever rest on the permanent foundation of truth, knowledge and beneficence. ”

“ But fame, celebrity, are sweet only at a distance, when you only dream about them. But when you have attained them you feel only their thorns. But then, with what anguish you feel every dram of their decrease. And I have forgotten to say something else. Why, we artists undergo a sentence at hard labour. ”

“ Did ever any human being escape more intacte in person and mind from the fiery furnace of popular admiration? Let us remember the severity of the ordeal to which she was exposed; the hard lot of those who pass their lives in the full-noon glare of public observation, where every speck is noted! What a difference too, between the aspiration after immortality and the pursuit of celebrity!—The noise of distant and future fame is like the sound of the [45] far-off sea, and the mingled roll of its multitudinous waves, which, as it swells on the ear, elevates the soul with a sublime emotion ”

“ It only follows the tacit, but definitely recognisable, aim of making a noise in the world, and by attracting the attention of men through its extravagances, of attaining celebrity and profit, and the gratification of all the desires and conceits agitating the envious souls of these filibusters of fame. ”

“ I have to thank the notoriety of your debaucheries for learning the place of your abode. It is the privilege of such fame as yours, that it cannot lie concealed. You are acquiring celebrity by an unerring path. ”

“ Celebrity has no attractions for you. What flattery, joy, or instruction can a man draw from the knowledge that his name will be graven on a monument, when time will efface the inscription sooner or later? ”

“ Here is the very phrase which is often wanted to signify that celebrity which puts its mark, good or bad, on the national history, in a manner which cannot be asserted of many notorious or famous historical characters. ”

“ And the longer I reflected, the more positive I became that there existed a more potent reason for the Celebrity's disguise than ennui. As actions speak louder than words, so does a man's character often give the lie to his tongue. ”

“ It follows that if we do not pursue a celebrity, sooner or later he will pursue us. He must; it is the law of his being. So I wait here very comfortably on my farm, and as I work in my fields I glance up casually from time to time to see if any celebrities are by chance coming up the town road to seek me out. Oh, we are crusty people, we farmers! Sooner or later they all come this way, all the warriors and the poets, all the philosophers and the prophets and the politicians. ”

“ Your talents have a degree of celebrity which leaves no room to doubt the superior endowments of your mind. I perceive that I have not been deceived as to your figure; I desire to know if the description I have received of your dwelling is as faithful: and I trust you will allow me to pursue my unhappy friend through all the scenes of his hope and despair. ”

“ My hopes, from my earliest years, have been hopes of celebrity as a writer—not of wealth, or of influence, or of accomplishing any of the thousand aims which furnish the great bulk of mankind with motives. ”

“ Most young men, when going through this stage, find a guide and philosopher in some hoary sinner, an extinct celebrity who lives by sponging on his young friends—an actor who has lost his voice, or an artist whose hand has begun to shake. ”

“ Among the temporary idols of the day, (by which name we shall distinguish those women whose beauty, rank, and patronage, procured them a sort of poetical celebrity, very different from the halo of splendour which love and genius cast round a chosen divinity,) there are one or two who deserve to be particularised. ”

“ Raised by his own talents and industry to great celebrity, and at a time of life, when others have not ventured to cross the threshold of the profession, honoured with the patronage of the first dramatic personage living, it would be a miracle if he had not been rendered giddy by his unexpected height. ”

“ Now let us suppose that every difficulty be overcome, and that aided by fortune you have actually in your lifetime acquired not only celebrity, but glory. What will be the fruit of this? In the first place, men will wish to see you, and make your acquaintance; they will indicate you as a distinguished man, and will honour you in every possible way. ”

“ And then, as the producer of the admired volumes simply sat there in her dressing-gown, with the saddest of slow head-shakes, looking suddenly too wan even to care that it was at last all out: "What, in that case, is the use of success and celebrity and genius? ”

“ After this, the deluge, of biographies, autobiographies, interviewings, photographic realities, portraits plain and coloured—many of them uncommonly plain, and some of them wonderfully coloured,—until a Celebrity who has not been done and served up, with or without a plate, is a Celebrity indeed.
"Celebrities" have hitherto been valuable to the interviewer, photographer, and proprietor of a Magazine in due proportion. ”

“ But when the art of Extemporal Comedy flourished among these children of fancy, the universal pleasure these representations afforded to a whole vivacious people, and the recorded celebrity of their great actors, open a new field for the speculation of genius. ”

“ Every now and then I feel quite proud at the idea of acting in a play of my own at two and twenty, and then I look again at my "good works," this precious play, and it seems to be no better than "filthy rags." But perhaps I may do better hereafter. Hereafter! Oh dear! how many things are better than doing even the best in this kind! how many things must be better than real fame! but if one has none of those, fame might, perhaps, be pleasant. No actor's fame, or rather celebrity, or rather notoriety, would satisfy me ”

“ If not a connoisseur, yet a professed admirer of the fine arts, each in its turn met with his unbounded encouragement. The artist, emerging from want and obscurity, owed to his timely patronage a future ease and celebrity. ”

“ It would seem that a student of human nature, such as every successful writer should be, might by this time have arrived at some conception of my client's character, simple as it was, and have learned to overlook the slight peculiarity in his mode of expressing himself. But here the Celebrity fell short, if my client's emotions were not pitched in the same key as those of other people, who shall say that his heart was not as large or his sympathies as wide as many another philanthropist? ”

“ In the olden times, a star of fashion was quoted for dancing at court, for the splendour of his equipages, his running footmen and black servants, his expensive dress, his accomplishments, his celebrity at foreign courts, his fine form, delicate hand, jewels, library, &c. &c. Now fame (for notoriety is so called) may be obtained by being a Greek, or Pigeon, by being mistaken for John the coachman, when on the box behind four tits; by being a good gentleman miller, by feeding the fancy, standing in print for crim. ”

“ The chief drawback to celebrity is that it is generally dressed in mourning; a kind of half mourning when it is notoriety only, and absolute weeds when it is fame. Why should cleverness and crape go together? ”

“ A man known to us only as a celebrity in politics or in trade, gains largely in our esteem if we discover that he has some intellectual taste or skill; ”

“ There is a certain class of poets, not a very numerous one, whom I would call poetical old bachelors. They are such as enjoy a certain degree of fame and popularity themselves, without sharing their celebrity with any fair piece of excellence ”

“ I should say, let him take the celebrity it gives him gratefully but not too seriously; let him reflect that he is often the necessity rather than the ideal of the paragrapher, and that the notoriety the journalists bestow upon him is not the measure of their acquaintance with his work, far less his meaning. ”

“ The lovely author of these lines, whose beauty can only be exceeded by her retiring modesty, is wholly unconscious of their publication, and we well know will blush at celebrity which the accomplishments of her mind, the graces of her person, and the misfortunes of her destiny, have rendered inevitable. ”

“ You have on the profits of your first and second books, and a reasonable hope of continuance, enlarged your way of life, incurred responsibilities, built a charming house not yet paid for, married a wife who adores you (shall we say?) and is proud of your celebrity, but for these very reasons—and chiefly for love—will on any diminution of your fame, fret secretly even if she does not nag actively. ”

“ But he had then none of the oddities and mannerisms which I hold to be inseparable from genius, and which struck my attention in after days when I came in contact with the Celebrity. Hence I am constrained to the belief that his eccentricity must have arrived with his genius. and both after the age of twenty-five. Far be it from me to question the talents of one upon whose head has been set the laurel of fame! ”

“ She was photographed, written about, worshipped by important people, until her celebrity spread far over the world, as the celebrity even of a woman who is only beautiful and who does nothing can spread in the era of the paragraph. ”

“ There are several gentlemen now earning a fair living by feeding public curiosity and battening on the fame of its darlings. They do it by seeking out a celebrity and retailing his unconsidered trifles of talk at a good market price. ”

“ But while a few persons of exceptional talent manage eventually to gain a foothold in the professional world of letters rising to celebrity through the wide diffusion of their art, ideals, or opinions ”

“ They have, indeed, a certain sleepiness about the eyes which may be fascinating to some, but I should rather ascribe the celebrity which their charms have acquired among navigators to their cheerfulness and gayety. ”

“ Because report says you will create a great sensation at the very commencement of your career; and the New World is ever eager to welcome each celebrity that is achieved in the Old,—more especially that which belongs to your enchanting art. ”

“ How far sketches of the living are a breach of courtesy committed by the author toward the persons described, depends, of course, on the temper in which they are done. To select a subject for complimentary description is to pay the most undoubted tribute to celebrity, and, as far as I have observed, most distinguished persons sympathize with the public interest in them and their belongings, and are willing to have their portraits drawn, either with pen or pencil, by as many as offer them the compliment. ”

“ Opportunity, rather than talents, is the great requisite for circulating gossip; a very moderate degree of ability sufficing for the observation which shall render private anecdotes, more especially when they relate to persons of celebrity, of interest to the general reader. ”

“ To the attainment of the former, there are adequate motives in the case of all who follow the pursuit professionally: the other is hardly ever attained where there is not, or where there has not been at some period of life, an ardent desire of celebrity. ”

“ The greater number of these poor creatures see no distinction between the terms notoriety and celebrity; notorious, shamefully notorious—they certainly are; worthily celebrated they can never become, let them pose as they [92] will on the stage or in the private rooms of the photographer. These and other new aspects of society are a condition of the times. We are not now content in the columns of our newspapers to deal with public matters in the abstract ”

“ Bruff's office."
In our modern system of civilisation, celebrity (no matter of what kind) is the lever that will move anything. The fame of the great Cuff had even reached the ears of the small Gooseberry. ”

“ The devil and The Bittern are much obliged to you. It is the honest truth that makes his work so easy for him. We are of a trade in more senses than one. Now tell me, can’t we exchange celebrities? I’ll give you my names, and you shall give me yours. ”

“ One thunder of applause from pit, boxes, and gallery, is equal to a whole immortality of posthumous fame: and when we hear an actor, whose modesty is equal to his merit, declare, that he would like to see a dog wag his tail in approbation, what must he feel when he sees the whole house in a roar! Besides, Fame, as if their reputation had been entrusted to her alone, has been particularly careful of the renown of her theatrical favourites: she forgets one by one, and year by year, those who have been great lawyers, great statesmen, and great warriors in their day ”

“ The admiration of men who care for poetry, and how many of them are there? There's a bigger demand for smoked glasses to look at eclipses of the sun. Why should Fame come to me? Haven't I given up my days for her? That is enough to keep her away. I am a poet; that is enough reason for her to slight me. Proud and aloof and cold as marble, what does Fame care for us? ”

“ It will impress them with the spectacle of a noble actor, profoundly and passionately true to the high art by which he lives, bearing eloquent testimony to its beauty and its worth, and to the fine powers and sterling virtues of the [Pg 150] good men and women with whom he has been associated in its pursuit. It will display to them—and to all others who may chance to read it—a type of that absolute humility of spirit which yet is perfectly compatible with a just pride of intellect. ”