Ten Quotes on Fame

Pop diva Britney Spears recently figured in the news again. I'm not into celebrity-watching alright, but she was all over cable television so how could I miss the news that she was taken to the Cedars-Sinai Hospital last Thursday night for what one source called a "complete psychotic meltdown"? She actually joins an already long, and still growing, list of showbiz celebrities whose success, fame and fortune worked more like a curse than a charm for them.

At 55, going 56 this year, you could probably say that I've been around long enough to have confirmed from experience the great truth in the old saw that "there is a price for everything." On this note, here's a short collection of quotes on the subject of fame:

Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident and money takes wings. The only thing that endures is character. -Unknown

* * *

Fame always brings loneliness. Success is as ice cold and lonely as the North Pole. -Vicki Baum

* * *

A celebrity is a person who works hard all of their life to become well known, and then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized. -Fred A. Allen

* * *

People should realize we're jerks just like them. -Edward De Bono

* * *

He said "What did fame ever do for me? I'm still broke!" I said "What did your fame ever do for anyone else?" -Raphie Frank

* * *

Fame or integrity: which is more important? Money or happiness: which is more valuable? Success or failure: which is more destructive? If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never truly be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. -Lao Tzu

* * *

Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property of a man. -Thomas Carlyle

* * *

Fame is a food that dead men eat. -Henry Austin Dobson

* * *

Stardom isn't a profession; it's an accident. -Lauren Bacall

* * *

In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. -Andy Warhol

(Thanks to www.stockxpert.com for the royalty-free photo shown above)

Ten Quotes on Success

I received a pat on the back today after a successful presentation, which brought the project I've been working on since August this year just one step shy from final approval. I hope to get it tomorrow with one more presentation.

Musing on how things seem easier now to achieve compared to how it was in my younger years, I cannot help but ruminate that my success today didn't really come easy. I selected these ten quotes on success because each one of these speak a great truth in my career life.

Did success come easy for you or are you like me? See if you can identify with these quotes:

"Actually, I'm an overnight success. But it took twenty years." -Monty Hall

* * *

"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm." -Sir Winston Churchill

* * *

"I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom." -General George S. Patton

* * *

"Eighty percent of success is showing up." -Woody Allen

* * *

"You will find the key to success under the alarm clock." -Benjamin Franklin

* * *

"It is wise to keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final." -Roger Babson

* * *

"Real success finding your lifework in the work that you love." -David McCullough

* * *

"Men are born to succeed, not fail." -Henry David Thoreau

* * *

"Success usually comes to those who are too busy looking for it." -Henry David Thoreau

* * *

"Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life." -Dr. David M. Burns

Quotes From "Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life"...Part 2

I continue here with the passages that are marked in my copy of this book by Gregg Levoy:

On the "Past":

"The past contains hints about "the deeper-than-conscious goals toward which the movement of our lives is trying to take us."

* * *

"The past reminds us of our struggles with our destinies."

* * *

"By opening the inactive file...we may discover the lost opportunities of our lives."

* * *

"...our past begs the question inherent in any history: Does it have a goal?"

* * *

"The past can't be changed, only your attitude toward it can."

On "Calls" and "Callings":

"In a sense, patterns are calls."

* * *

"The dream that won't go away is a call, as is the symptom that recurs, the section of the bookstore you always go to first, and the lesson you've endlessly had to learn or are intent upon impressing on your children."

* * *

"...it often turns out that calls are echoes coming out of the chasms in our lives."

* * *

"We decline the invitation of our callings because we feel inadequate to the task, but the opposite is also true. We're afraid of our own power."

* * *

"Sometimes we're robbed of our calls by the fate into which we fell headlong at birth."

* * *

"When the brass ring comes around in life, kiddo, you'd better grab it, because it may never come around again."

* * *

"Much of the pain associated with callings comes from avoiding them, from not surrendering to them."

On "Shadows":

"...it is what we despise in people, or envy, or worship, or become obsessed with."

On "Healing":

"...once he had touched the wound in himself, he could bring healing touch to that same wound in others."

On the "Right Path":

"If it feels safe, it's probably not the right path, but if it scares you, it probably is."

On our "Power":

"It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us."

On "Conformity":

"Don't sit down in life. All through your life you're going to be asked to sit down, to conform, comply, and compromise, and it can be very deadly if you get in the habit of doing that."

* * *

"Be leery of the price of conformity. Stand up, create things, do things."

On the "Mind":

"The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings."

On "Freedom":

"Until you actually make a choice, freedom is only potential energy, energy in abeyance, in waiting."

On "Other's Opinion":

"...in the course of life a small number of people will like you, a small number will dislike you, and the vast majority won't care one way or the other."

* * *

"If we look only to others to show us who we are...then the reflections we'll have of ourselves will always be distorted a little."

On "Parents":

"When we attempt to carry our parents' unfulfilled lives, we squeeze out our own."

On "Self-esteem":

"Ironically, it's a function of self-esteem that we resist our callings."

On "Insincerity":

"The most exhausting thing in my life is being insincere."

On "Timing":

"The skill that seems most essential for such leaps is a certain feel for ripeness."

On "Change":

"If you're taking chances and making changes just for the sake of not standing still, your action may be more about running away from something than moving toward something."

* * *

"Motion is not necessarily progress any more than noise is necessarily music."

* * *

"By trying to shelter ourselves from change, we isolate ourselves from living."

* * *

"An ordeal may serve the purpose of shaking us loose from our moorings in order to set us up for important changes we can't see or imagine yet."

On "Risk":

"Is the payoff worth more than the pain?"

* * *

"...the important risks we don't take now become the regrets we have later."

On "Sacrifice":

"Sacrifice is the shadow in the calling."

On "Fear":

"Fear is a signal that you're close to something vital and that your call is worthy of you."

On "Life":

"Your life mirrors what you put into it or withhold from it."

* * *

"...the purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things."

On the "Secret to Success":

"You've got to ask! Asking is, in my opinion, the world's most powerful--and neglected--secret to success."

On "Best Mentors":

"The best mentors are also those who are students at the same time, other people's mentorees."

On "Great Struggles":

"Great struggles aren't inevitably followed by great triumphs and then great vacations. Sometimes great struggles are followed by more great struggles. Maybe triumph and reward ensue,and maybe not."

--Gregg Levoy

Quotes From “The Soul’s Code: In Search Of Character And Calling”

My inner journey started in the Summer of 1967, just before I entered college. On one otherwise forgettable day that summer, a religious missionary found her way into our sleepy barrio and gifted my mother with a slim blue-covered pamphlet entitled “Why Are You Here?”

That question has bothered me ever since. I still am today, after years of disappointing on and off research and self-study on a subject that I know now has no precise answers. This book by James Hillman, which I acquired in July 1999, helped a lot in my soul-search. The marked sentences and passages in my copy of this book which are shown below are the lessons I learned which I would like to share:

On the “Acorn Theory”:

“…the ‘acorn theory’ …holds that each person bears a uniqueness that asks to be lived and that is already present before it can be lived.”

On “Calling”:

“Each person enters the world called.”

* * *

“A calling may be postponed, avoided, intermittently missed. It may possess you completely. Whatever; eventually it will out. It makes its claim.”

* * *

“…calling seems closest during the years through eight and then again during adolescence…”


On “Character”:

“You are born with a character; it is given; a gift, as the old stories say, from the guardians before your birth.”


On “Soul”:

“The soul of each of us is given a unique daimon before we are born, and it has selected an image or pattern that we live on earth.”

On “Childhood”:

“…we must attend very carefully to childhood to catch early glimpses of the daimon in action, to grasp its intentions and not block its way.”

On “Image”:

“…you and I and every single person is born with a defining image.”

On “Compensation Theory”:

“…the roots of later superiorities are buried in early inferiorities.”

On “Vision”:

“…as almost every extraordinary life shows, there is a vision, an ideal that calls. To what precise actuality it calls usually stays vague if not altogether unknown.”

On “Biographies”:

“They give our lives an imaginary dimension.”

On “Fate”:

“How curious that life can be foreordained and yet not foretold.”

* * *
“Catching the sly winks of fate is a reflective act. It is an act of thought…”

On “Accidents”:

“The world is run as much by folly as by wisdom, as much as order as by chaos, but—and this ‘but’ is huge—these accidents may still intend something interesting.”

On “Success”:

“…the source of success appears to lie in a mother’s doting—or in her neglectful selfishness, which forces an offspring out on its own.”

On “Love Maps”:

“The theory of love maps suggests that environmental conditioning determines the object of your desire.”

* * *

“…long before your true love walks past you in a classroom, at a shopping mall, or in the office, you have already constructed some basic elements of your ideal sweetheart.”

On “Platonic Myth”:

“…a person is born with an innate paradigm that is not identical with genetic endowment..”

On “Code of the Soul”:

“…’in late adulthood’, when calling, character, and fate have become more inescapable, then, too, one’s intelligence, and all that it serves, belongs more to the code of the soul than to that of the genes.”

On “Intuition”:

“Intuitions occur; we do not make them. They come to us as a sudden idea, a definite judgment, a grasped meaning.”

-James Hillman

More One-liners From "Jacob's Journey"

I bought "Jacob's Journey" in September 1995 -- a year of changes, transition and adjustment in my personal life. My father passed away in February of that year. I also reluctantly left my corporate planning work to enter the brave new world of investment banking around July of that same year. It is no wonder then that when I randomly picked up a copy of Noah ben Shea's book at National and read the sub-title on its cover, I knew I had to pay for it right away. The sub-title reads: "Wisdom to Find the Way, Strength to Carry On". Allow me to share with you what quotations I highlighted in this book because of the wisdom and inspiration I was trying to draw from it at that point in time in my life:

On living one's Life:

"Hope for the best and make peace with the rest."

On Patience:

"Patience is the shortest route on a long journey."

On Kindness:

"It is wiser to be kind than to be wise."

On Parents:

"Some parents love knowing. Others know love."

On Growing Old:

" 'Growing old' is a contradiction in terms."

On Work and Love:

"There is only work and love in life...If we are fortunate, we love our work. If we are wise, we are willing to work at love."

On Life:

"Life is a gift...Open yours."

On Fear:

"Fear makes us not only less than we might be but less than we think we are."

On being Alone:

"A man who is alone with himself is not without company."

On Success:

" Have you ever met a man whose success is not also a burden?"

On what is Valuable:

"The way to discover what is of value in life is by taking the time to treasure the moments."

On Relationships:

"A relationship is not a way for us to exhibit our strength but to find our balance."

On Children:

"...your children are a gift to you, and only expectation can find disappointment in gifts that have not yet been opened."

On Journeys:

"Wherever a man stops on his journey, the first person he meets is himself."

On Wisdom:

"Wisdom arrives when we are willing to journey to our ignorance."

On Lies:

"In the seed of a lie is a forest of deceit."

On Self:

"Only when we place too much importance on who we are do we misplace our self."

On Problems:

"Often in life, the solution to our problems comes not so much from what we start doing but from what we stop doing."

On Age:

"Age is not the mark of time but how we mark our time."

On Friends:

"A friend is someone who allows you distance but is never far away."


--Noah ben Shea