Popularity

Popularity is the quality of being well-liked or common, or having a high social status. Popularity figures are an important part of many people's personal value systems and form a vital component of success in people-oriented fields such as management, politics, and entertainment, among others.

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• Their poet, a sad trimmer, but no less
  In company a very pleasant fellow,
  Had been the favorite of full many a mess
  Of men, and made them speeches when half mellow;
  And though his meaning they could rarely guess,
  Yet still they deign'd to hiccup or to bellow
  The glorious meed of popular applause,
  Of which the first ne'er knows the second cause.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto III, Stanza 82.

• Some shout him, and some hang upon his car,
  To gaze in his eyes, and bless him. Maidens wave
  Their 'kerchiefs, and old women weep for joy;
  While others, not so satisfied, unhorse
  The gilded equipage, and turning loose
  His steeds, usurp a place they well deserve.
  • William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book VI, line 708.

• And to some men popularity is always suspicious. Enjoying none themselves, they are prone to suspect the validity of those attainments which command it.
  • George Henry Lewes, The Spanish Drama (1846), Chapter III.

• "Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you!"
  • Luke 6:26.

• All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights
  Are spectacled to see him.
  • William Shakespeare, Coriolanus (c. 1607-08), Act II, scene 1, line 221.

• I have seen the dumb men throng to see him, and
  The blind to hear him speak: matrons flung gloves,
  Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchers
  Upon him as he passed; the nobles bended,
  As to Jove's statue, and the commons made
  A shower and thunder with their caps and shouts.
  • William Shakespeare, Coriolanus (c. 1607-08), Act II, scene 1, line 278.

• Or art thou base, common and popular?
  • William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), Act IV, scene 1, line 37.

• The ladies call him sweet;
  The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet.
  • William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1595-6), Act V, scene 2, line 329.

• There was ease in Casey's manner as he stept into his place,
  There was pride in Casey's bearing and a smile on Casey's face,
  And when responding to the cheers he lightly doft his hat,
  No stranger in the crowd could doubt, 't was Casey at the bat.
  • Ernest L. Thayer, Casey at the Bat (1888).

• He has fought a good fight and has had to face every difficulty except popularity.
  • Oscar Wilde of William Ernest Henley; quoted in William Rothenstein, Men and Memories, I, ch, 25.