Explore "On the Last Infirmity" by Hilaire Belloc on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
If you were to seek for the most irrational of all appetites, the one appetite for which you could not give any sort of reason, you would find it to be the strongest appetite of all: the appetite for posthumous fame.
Milton made a little fortune (in the literary sense of that word -- and my fellow-hacks will know what sort of fortune _that_ is) by calling it the last infirmity of noble minds. It is a very true saying, not only in its direct sense but in its implication. It is not only true that men who have conquered every other appetite hardly conquer this one; it is also true that there is something divine about the desire for fame, infirmity though it be. The mind remains well noble though still fully possessed of such a desire.