Selected reputation quotes

1. Public service is my motto.

2. Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages - just don't catch him at breakfast. Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.

3. Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.

4. Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.

5. When young Mark Robarts was leaving college, his father might well declare that all men began to say all good things to him, and to extol his fortune in that he had a son blessed with so excellent a disposition.

6. Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.

7. If I give you a good wine, you will see how it tastes and after you ask where it comes from.

8. Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money.

9. Please don't believe everything you hear about me, regardless of how true it may be.

10. Calumnies are answered best with silence.

11. Thy praise or dispraise is to me alike; One doth not stroke me, nor the other strike.

12. It is as great a spite to be praised in the wrong place, and by a wrong person, as can be done to a noble nature.

13. In this business, until you're known as a monster you're not a star.

14. I think the original, 'They're the next Jane's Addiction' things that people said about us in the beginning have been pretty much wiped out.

15. I'm not afraid of Spassky. The world knows I'm the best. You don't need a match to prove it.

16. People have been playing against me below their strength for fifteen years.

17. Genius. It's a word. What does it really mean? If I win I'm a genius. If I don't, I'm not.

18. I think I'm still clean living. That's - I mean I don't go home and have orgies or anything like that. I'm still the same person I've always been.

19. I have the consolation of leaving your kingdom in the highest degree of glory and of reputation.

20. Keep up appearances whatever you do.

21. Once a gentleman, and always a gentleman.

22. I think the word of the United States has been as good as gold in its international dealings and its agreements.

23. It is with literature as with law or empire - an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in possession.

24. Never explain - your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

25. Do not adjust your sandals while passing through a melon-field, nor yet arrange your hat beneath an orange-tree.

26. A beaten general is disgraced forever.

27. The highest form of vanity is love of fame.

28. Nothing would have been changed for the German people, but my name would have gone down in history as that of the greatest traitor.

29. The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.

30. Of course in Miami, not denouncing Fidel Castro at every turn is almost as bad as saying Gloria Estefan can't sing.

31. You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.

32. When I see an Alfa Romeo go by, I tip my hat.

33. My character and good name are in my own keeping. Life with disgrace is dreadful. A glorious death is to be envied.

34. Arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, verbose, a showoff. I have been called all of these. Of course, I am.

35. Charity may cover a multitude of sins, but success transmutes them into virtues.

36. I've been too many places. I'm like the bad penny.

37. Strangers who have seen Shaw face to face are wont to report their surprise at his gentleness and consideration, his willingness to listen and his complete lack of pose.

38. If I don't practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it.

39. The public seldom forgive twice.

40. Biography is one of the new terrors of death.

41. Truth will lose its credit, if delivered by a person that has none.

42. That dangerous but too commonly received notion, that a reformed rake makes the best husband.

43. 'I hadn't realised I enjoyed that reputation. But as I do, perhaps you could make it a large one.'

44. The fear of missing out means today's media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no-one dares miss out.

45. Having our own ambassador making these statements about Karimov is acutely embarrassing. It's bad for British business interests, it's bad for the stability in the region. I mean, he sends back these dossiers full of stories of what Karimov's security forces have supposed to have done, he sends them to the foreign office or whatever, he sends them directly to us, I mean does he think I'm going to read it, does he imagine that I'm interested in this stuff?

46. When Mr. John P. Gavit, managing editor of the New York Evening Post, wrote to Mr. Melville E. Stone, general manager of the Associated Press, that I had a reputation 'as an insatiable hunter of personal publicity,' what Mr. Gavit meant was that I was accustomed to demand and obtain more space in newspapers than the amount of my worldly possessions entitled me to.

47. He who is a legend in his own time is ruled by that legend. It may begin in absolute innocence. But, to cover up flaws and maintain the myth of Divine Power, one must employ desperate measures.

48. There are those who say that I wish to rule the world, but both my thoughts and my deeds demonstrate the contrary.

49. O moral Gower!

50. I wrote the story myself. It's about a girl who lost her reputation and never missed it.

51. Hitch is a gentleman farmer who raises goose flesh. ~ Ingrid Bergman

52. If you hang out with a loser, you are a loser

53. You have committed one of the greatest stupidities - for yourself and for me! Your association with an anti-Semitic chief expresses a foreignness to my whole way of life which fills me again and again with ire or melancholy. ... It is a matter of honor with me to be absolutely clean and unequivocal in relation to anti-Semitism, namely, opposed to it, as I am in my writings. I have recently been persecuted with letters and Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheets. My disgust with this party (which would like the benefit of my name only too well!) is as pronounced as possible, but the relation to Forster, as well as the aftereffects of my former publisher, the anti-Semitic Schmeitzner, always brings the adherents of this disagreeable party back to the idea that I must belong to them after all. ... It arouses mistrust against my character, as if publicly I condemned something which I have favored secretly - and that I am unable to do anything against it, that the name of Zarathustra is used in every Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheet, has almost made me sick several times.

54. When Jack Benny has a party, you not only bring your own scotch, you bring your own rocks. ~ George Burns

55. I called them, three or four people, and I said, 'It's very easy for a publication to print whatever they want to print as a representation of me, but it's not me. If you would allow me just a moment to represent myself ... if you still feel like I'm a shithead or a schmuck afterwards, then fine. But at least hear me out.' These were heavy, right-wing, military people: one was a cop ... one had a nephew who'd been wounded in Iraq. I told them, 'What was printed was ugly, but this is what I meant...' And each one of them said, 'I understand.' [response to hate mail and calls he received following the Stern article] (2004)

56. 'the funniest woman in Hollywood' ~ Lucille Ball 1977

57. The prince must consider, as has been in part said before, how to avoid those things which will make him hated or contemptible; and as often as he shall have succeeded he will have fulfilled his part, and he need not fear any danger in other reproaches. It makes him hated above all things, as I have said, to be rapacious, and to be a violator of the property and women of his subjects, from both of which he must abstain. And when neither their property nor honour is touched, the majority of men live content, and he has only to contend with the ambition of a few, whom he can curb with ease in many ways. It makes him contemptible to be considered fickle, frivolous, effeminate, mean-spirited, irresolute, from all of which a prince should guard himself as from a rock; and he should endeavour to show in his actions greatness, courage, gravity, and fortitude; and in his private dealings with his subjects let him show that his judgments are irrevocable, and maintain himself in such reputation that no one can hope either to deceive him or to get round him. That prince is highly esteemed who conveys this impression of himself, and he who is highly esteemed is not easily conspired against; for, provided it is well known that he is an excellent man and revered by his people, he can only be attacked with difficulty.

58. The most tremendous genius raised Mozart above all masters, in all centuries and in all the arts. ~ Richard Wagner