Man is so much more sensitive to the contempt of others than to contempt for himself.

The surest aid in combating the male's disease of self-contempt is to be loved by a clever woman.

To show pity is felt as a sign of contempt because one has clearly ceased to be an object of fear as soon as one is pitied.

That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts. There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking.

What is the vanity of the vainest man compared with the vanity which the most modest possesses when, in the midst of nature and the world, he feels himself to be ''man''!

In the beautiful, man sets himself up as the standard of perfection; in select cases he worships himself in it. Man believes that the world itself is filled with beauty /he forgets that it is he who has created it. He alone has bestowed beauty upon the world /alas! only a very human, an all too human, beauty.