A saint addicted to excessive self-abnegation is a dangerous associate; he may infect you with poverty, and a stiffening of those joints which are needed for advancement-in a word, with more renunciation than you care for-and so you flee the contagion.

Need is a low door which, when we must by stern necessity pass through, forces the greatest to bend down the most.

This book should be read as one would read the book of a dead man.

Foppery is the egotism of clothes.

Reality in strong doses frightens.

A saint addicted to excessive self-abnegation is a dangerous associate; he may infect you with poverty, and a stiffening of those joints which are needed for advancement-in a word, with more renunciation than you care for-and so you flee the contagion.

To love beauty is to see light.