Honore de Balzac Quotes
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The boor covers himself, the rich man or the fool adorns himself, and the elegant man gets dressed.
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Women are as they are; they necessarily have the defects of their virtues.
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Love is a religion, and its rituals cost more than those of other religions. It goes by quickly and, like a street urchin, it likes to mark its passage by a trail of devastation.
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The fact is that love is of two kinds, one which commands, and one which obeys. The two are quite distinct, and the passion to which the one gives rise is not the passion of the other.
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Clothes are like a gloss that sets off everything; dresser were invented more to enhance physical advantages than to veil physical defects.
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What is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood?
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Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.
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When a woman starts talking about her duty, her regard for appearances, and her respect for religion, she raises so many bulwarks which she delights to see captured by storm.
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Journalism is a giant catapult set in motion by pigmy hatreds.
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Reading brings us unknown friends.
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Remorse is impotence, impotence which sins again. Repentance alone is powerful; it ends all.
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The union of a want and a sentiment.
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Great minds always tend to see virtue in misfortune.
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The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.
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The good we do to others is spoilt unless we efface ourselves so completely that those we help have no sense of inferiority.
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Nobody loves a woman because she is handsome or ugly, stupid or intelligent. We love because we love.
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Women, perhaps even require a little hypocrisy.
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People exaggerate both happiness and unhappiness; we are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people say we are.
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To stroll is a science, it is the gastronomy of the eye. To walk is to vegetate, to stroll is to live.... To stroll is to enjoy, it is to assume a mind-set, it is to admire the sublime pictures of unhappiness, of love, of joy, of graceful or grotesque portraits; it is to plunge one's vision to the depths of a thousand existences: young, it is to desire everything; old, it is to live the life of the young, to marry their passions.
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A woman must be a genius to create a good husband.
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Conventions are often more cruel than the law.
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No society is complete without some victim, a creature to pity, to jeer at, to scorn or to protect.
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Woman is closer to angels than man because she knows how to mingle an infinite tenderness with the most absolute compassion.
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Generally our confidences move downward rather than upward; in our secret affairs, we employ our inferiors much more than our bettors.