You long to “leap at a single bound into celebrity.” Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable. Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else, — very rarely to those who say to themselves, “Go to, now, let us be a celebrated individual!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) American poet, essayist, scholar

“The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,” Atlantic Monthly (1858-10)
    (Source)

Collected in The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, ch. 12 (1858).