There are but two ways of paying debt: Increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying out.

Bankruptcy is a sacred state, a condition beyond conditions, as theologians might say, and attempts to investigate it are necessarily obscene, like spiritualism. One knows only that he has passed into it and lives beyond us, in a condition not ours.

Small debts are like small gun shot; they are rattling around us on all sides and one can scarcely escape being wounded. Large debts are like canons, they produce a loud noise, but are of little danger.

Debt is the worst poverty.

Interest works night and day in fair weather and in foul. It gnaws at a man's substance with invisible teeth.

I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse: borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable.

The payment of debts is necessary for social order. The non-payment is quite equally necessary for social order. For centuries humanity has oscillated, serenely unaware, between these two contradictory necessities.

Rather go to bed with out dinner than to rise in debt.

Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay.

Words pay no debts.