“Fame itself … doesn’t really afford you anything more than a good seat in a restaurant.”
– David Bowie

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
– Henry David Thoreau

“I’m shy, paranoid, whatever word you want to use. I hate fame. I’ve done everything I can to avoid it.”
Johnny Depp

“If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I’m still waiting, it’s all been to seduce women basically.”
– Jean-Paul Sartre

“There’s no difference between fame and infamy now. There’s a new school of professional famous people that don’t do anything. They don’t create anything.”
– Ricky Gervais

“Fame doesn’t fulfill you. It warms you a bit, but that warmth is temporary.”
– Marilyn Monroe

“The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you do without thought of fame. If it comes at all it will come because it is deserved, not because it is sought after.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Fame hit me like a ton of bricks.”
– Eminem

“If you come to fame not understanding who you are, it will define who you are.”
– Oprah Winfrey

“I think I understand what military fame is – to be killed on the field of battle and have your name misspelled in the newspapers.”
– William Tecumseh Sherman

“Fame was thrilling only until it became gruelling. Money was fun only until you ran out of things to buy.”
– Gloria Swanson

“What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing, and for whom you care as little.”
– Lord Byron

“A life without fame can be a good life, but fame without a life is no life at all.”
– Clive James

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

Thoughts on fame

Tolpuddle martyrs in the dock

DORSET’S New Hardy Players take a break from Thomas Hardy stories this year to bring to life – and new audiences – the true Dorset story of the men whose courage and sacrifice were the most important factors in the development of the English Trade Union movement. Six Men of Dorset will be performed in Dorchester from 13th to 16th June.

The performance will begin in Dorchester Corn Exchange and will move to the historic Courtroom in Shire Hall, where the Dorset farm-workers faced the trial which would become one of the major events in British industrial and social history.

In 1834, against a backdrop of extreme rural poverty and national turmoil, six lowly men found themselves facing the full wrath and power of the British establishment.

Commissioned by the TUC, 100 years after the arrest of the six, this production of The Tolpuddle Play takes it back to its roots, with the first act at its original venue, Dorchester’s Corn Exchange, before processing up to Shire Hall Museum for the second act in the very courtroom where the Martyrs met their fate.

Under Tim Laycock and Emma Hill’s direction, this is guaranteed to be a spine-chilling, moving and immersive experience.