I always wanted everything about me to be distinctive," he added, smiling.
He was proud of his physical appearance, inordinately pleased with his great height, vain of it even.

"Height gives distinction," he declared, and once even went so far as to say, "One can't picture Napoleon as small; one thinks only of his magnificent head and forgets the little podgy figure; it must have been a great nuisance to him: small men have no dignity." All this utterly unconscious of the fact that most tall men have no ever present-sense of their height as an advantage.

Yet on the whole one agrees with Montaigne that height is the chief beauty of a man: it gives presence.
Oscar never learned anything from criticism; he had a good deal of personal dignity in spite of his amiability, and when one found fault with his work, he would smile vaguely or change the subject as if it didn't interest him.
Again and again I played on his self-esteem to get him to write; but always met the same answer.
"Oh, Frank, it's impossible, impossible for me to work under these disgraceful conditions." "But you can have better conditions now and lots of money if you'll begin to work." He shook his head despairingly.

Again and again I tried, but failed to move him, even when I dangled money before him.

I didn't then know that he was receiving regularly more than L300 a year.