Honore de Balzac Quotes
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The love of nature is the only love that does not deceive human hopes.
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A beautiful book is a victory won in all the battlefields of human thought.
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Glory and fame mean twelve thousand francs' worth of paid articles in the newspapers and five thousand crowns' worth of dinners.
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Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.
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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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There is no such thing as a great talent without great will power.
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A woman must be a genius to create a good husband.
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A year at the breast is quite enough; children who are suckled longer are said to grow stupid, and I am all for popular sayings.
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A society of atheists would immediately invent a religion.
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Few men are raised in our estimation by being too closely examined.
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There are two histories : official history, lying, and then secret history, where you find the real causes of events.
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It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.
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A rent in your clothes is a mishap, a stain on them is a vice.
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What is art? Nature concentrated.
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The woman you buy takes a great deal of money. The woman who gives herself to you takes all your money.
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Many men nourish a pride which urges them to conceal their struggles and show themselves only as conquerors.
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According to man's environment, society has made as many different types of men as there are varieties in zoology. The differences between a soldier, a workman, a statesman, a tradesman, a sailor, a poet, a pauper and a priest, are more difficult to seize, but quite considerable as the differences between a wolf, a lion, an ass, a crow, a sea-calf, a sheep, and so on.
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If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.
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For the journalist, anything probable is gospel truth.
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It is a singular fact that most men of action incline to the theory of fatalism, while the greater part of men of thought believe in providence.
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A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over.
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What is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood?
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The events of human life, whether public or private, are so intimately linked to architecture that most observers can reconstruct nations or individuals in all the truth of their habits from the remains of their monuments or from their domestic relics.
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A sacrament by virtue of which each imparts nothing but vexations to the other.