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The best painters, as they progress in reputation and towards perfection, are found to dispense more and more with the technique of the art, for simpler methods. Simplicity never fails to charm.
Honore de Balzac -
Fools gain greater advantages through their weakness than intelligent men through their strength. We watch a great man struggling against fate and we do not lift a finger to help him. But we patronize a grocer who is headed for bankruptcy.
Honore de Balzac
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Hatred like love feeds on the merest trifles. Everything adds to it. Just as the being we love can do no wrong, so the one we hate can do no right.
Honore de Balzac -
Love is not only a feeling, it is also an art. A simple word, a sensitive precaution, a mere nothing reveal to a woman the sublime artist who can touch her heart without withering it.
Honore de Balzac -
This surface good-nature which captivates a new acquaintance and is no bar to treachery, which knows no scruple and is never at fault for an excuse, which makes an outcry at the wound which it condones, is one of the most distinctive features of the journalist. This camaraderie (the word is a stroke of genius) corrodes the noblest minds; it eats into their pride like rust, kills the germ of great deeds, and lends a sanction to moral cowardice.
Honore de Balzac -
Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.
Honore de Balzac -
Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.
Honore de Balzac -
One day, about the middle of July 1838, one of the carriages, lately introduced to Paris cabstands, and known as Milords, was driving down the Rue de l'Universite, conveying a stout man of middle height in the uniform of a captain of the National Guard.
Honore de Balzac
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Poles offer a mobility like that of the wind that blows over the immense plains and marches of Poland. Show a Pole a precipice, and he will leap headlong over it.
Honore de Balzac -
An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.
Honore de Balzac -
Law is a silvery web that lets the big flies pass and catches all the small ones.
Honore de Balzac -
Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt.
Honore de Balzac -
Liberty begets anarchy, anarchy leads to despotism, and despotism brings about liberty once again. Millions of human beings have perished without being able to make any of these systems triumph.
Honore de Balzac -
How did you get back?' asked Vautrin. 'I walked,' replied Eugene. 'I wouldn't like half-pleasures, myself,' observed the tempter. 'I'd want to go there in my own carriage, have my own box, and come back in comfort. All or nothing, that's my motto.' 'And a very good one,' said Madame Vauquer.
Honore de Balzac
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No hawk swooping down upon his prey, no stag improvising new detours by which to trick the huntsman, no dog scenting game from afar is comparable in speed to the celerity of a salesman when he gets wind a deal, to his skill in tripping up or forestalling a rival, and to the art with which he sniffs out and discovers a possible sale.
Honore de Balzac -
What makes friendship indissolute and what doubles its charms is a feeling we find lacking in love: I mean certitude.
Honore de Balzac -
Our energies are often stimulated by the necessity of supporting a being weaker than ourselves.
Honore de Balzac -
In intimate family life, there comes a moment when children, willingly or no, become the judges of their parents.
Honore de Balzac -
The prodigality of millionaires is comparable only to their greed of gain. Let some whim or passion seize them and money is of no account. In fact these Croesuses find whims and passions harder to come by than gold.
Honore de Balzac -
Happiness lends poetic charms to woman, and dress adorns her like a delicate tinge of rouge.
Honore de Balzac
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Resignation is a daily suicide.
Honore de Balzac -
Any man, however blase or depraved, finds his love kindled anew when he sees himself threatened by a rival.
Honore de Balzac -
We cannot confront solitude without moral resources.
Honore de Balzac -
A naked woman is less dangerous than one who spreads her skirt skillfully to cover and exhibit everything at once.
Honore de Balzac