Fleeting Glory Quotes

It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years?... What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare.

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

I know how limited and how fleeting fame is, so I just try not to get excited about it, honestly.

Summer grasses — all that remains of great soldiers' imperial dreams.

Happiness may have but one night, as glory but one day.

An actor's popularity is fleeting. His success has the life expectancy of a small boy who is about to look into a gas tank with a lighted match.

It's better to burn brightly for half as long than to be a dim lingering light.

He was, albeit only briefly, the hero of the world's hopes.

Glory, like the phoenix 'midst her fires, Exhales her odours, blazes, and expires.

Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing.

Time will bring to light whatever is hidden; it will cover up and conceal what is now shining in splendor.

Your writer, your scientist, your chief official, all have lost the power to revive the early illusion concerning fame and high place. Their beauty and delight is like the mirage in the heavens, only plain to the eye outside; within is nothing.

Dead men hear no tales; posthumous fame is an Irish bull.

You can win your Oscar, and you still wake up trying to figure out how to get your next job.

Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, and now that, and changes name as it changes direction.

The prospect of being immortal doesn't excite me, but the prospect of being a materialistic idol for four years does appeal.

Vain empty words / Of honour, glory and immortal fame, / Can these recall the spirit from its place, / Or re-inspire the breathless clay with life? / What tho' your fame with all its thousand trumpets, / Sound o'er the sepulchres, will that awake / The sleeping dead.

That feeling of being 19 or 20 and 'hot' in Hollywood was so intense.

On the slightest touch the unsupported fabric of their pride and power fell to the ground. The expiring senate displayed a sudden lustre, blazed for a moment, and was extinguished for ever.

I'd had people say, 'You'll enjoy being famous for a week, and you'll never enjoy it again'. But I don't think I had that week. I may have been working and missed that moment.

I have ventured, Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, This many summers in a sea of glory, But far beyond my depth. My high-blown pride At length broke under me, and now has left me, Weary and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream that must for ever hide me.

I was world champion, but I was never able to celebrate it. It was a joke for me.

The fame of an actor is won in minutes and seconds, not in years.