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I won a noble fame;
But with a sudden frown,
The people snatched my crown,
And, in the mire, trod down
My lofty name.
--
Sir Marmaduke's Musings, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

 

Theodore Tilton

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What you admire in others will develop in yourself. Therefore, to love the ordinary in any one is to become ordinary, while to love the noble and the lofty in all minds is to grow into the likeness of that which is noble and lofty.

 

Christian D. Larson

 

Every noble crown is, and on earth will forever be, a crown of thorns.

 

Thomas Carlyle

 

It was the normal working of the antisuccess mechanism. In our overcrowded modern world a hit record, a best-selling book, a successful film, can reach more people in a week than Shakespeare or Beethoven reached in a whole lifetime. And so fame has become the most romantic, the most desirable of all commodities, the dream for which a modern Faust might sell his soul to the Devil. Once attained, fame is never as easy to hold on to as some people believe. The people who achieve fame by some accident of fashion are usually forgotten within a week; the ones who remain on top have to work to stay there. But few people understand this. The result is that anyone who achieves sudden notoriety arouses envy and hostility. The greater the success, the greater the reaction.

 

Colin Wilson

 

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

 

Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

The following story is true. There was a little boy, and his father said, “Do try to be like other people. Don’t frown.” And he tried and tried, but could not. So his father beat him with a strap; and then he was eaten up by lions.
Reader, if young, take warning by his sad life and death. For though it may be an honour to be different from other people, if Carlyle’s dictum about the 30 million be still true, yet other people do not like it. So, if you are different, you had better hide it, and pretend to be solemn and wooden-headed. Until you make your fortune. For most wooden-headed people worship money; and, really, I do not see what else they can do. In particular, if you are going to write a book, remember the wooden-headed. So be rigorous; that will cover a multitude of sins. And do not frown.

 

Oliver Heaviside