Honore de Balzac Quotes
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Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.
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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 only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment.
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What moralist can deny that well-bred and vicious people are much more agreeable than their virtuous counterparts? Having crimes to atone for, they provisionally solicit indulgence by showing leniency toward the defects of their judges. Thus they pass for excellent folk.
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All happiness depends on courage and work.
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Emulation admires and strives to imitate great actions; envy is only moved to malice.
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If we all said to people's faces what we say behind one another's backs, society would be impossible.
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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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We are scarcely apt to berate the source of enjoyment.
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A monster which devours everything - that is familiarity.
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Poetry is only born after painful journeys into the vast regions of thought.
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A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.
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While seeking out the dead, I see nothing but the living.
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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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Numbers are intellectual witnesses that belong only to mankind.
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All poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things.
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For pain is perhaps but a violent pleasure? Who could determine the point where pleasure becomes pain, where pain is still a pleasure? Is not the utmost brightness of the ideal world soothing to us, while the lightest shadows of the physical world annoy?
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Every moment of happiness requires a great amount of Ignorance.
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In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.
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Squeeze marriage as much as you like, you will never extract anything from it but fun for bachelors and boredom for husbands.
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Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without esteem they cannot exist; esteem is the first demand that they make of love.
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Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.
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Poverty is a divine stepmother who does for youths what their own mothers were unable to do. It introduces them to frugality, to the world and to life.
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Nothing is irredeemably ugly but sin.