Honore de Balzac Quotes
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The human heart may find here and there a resting-place short of the highest height of affection, but we seldom stop in the steep, downward slope of hatred.
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For businessmen, the world is a bale of banknotes in circulation; for most young men, it is a woman; for some women, it is a man; and for others it may be a salon, a coterie, a part of town or a whole city.
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Those who spend too fast never grow rich.
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Self-interest is an ineffable feeling which shall follow us into God's very presence since they say there is a hierarchy even among the Holy Saints.
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Women, perhaps even require a little hypocrisy.
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Poetry is only born after painful journeys into the vast regions of thought.
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The Parisan, sauntering the streets idly, is as often a man in despair as a lounger.
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Genius is answerable only to itself; it is the sole judge of the means, since it alone knows the end; thus genius must consider itself as above the law, for it is the task of genius to remake the law; moreover the man who frees himself from his time and place may take everything, hazard everything, for everything is his by right.
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Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true.
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A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of man's vanity, the novice responds but to one.
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A lover teaches a wife all her husband has kept from her.
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A flow of words is a sure sign of duplicity.
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Believe everything you hear said of the world; nothing is too impossibly bad.
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Every moment of happiness requires a great amount of Ignorance.
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In the first woman we love, we love everything. Growing older, we love the woman only.
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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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Nature endows woman alternately with a particular strength which helps her to suffer and a weakness which counsels her to be resigned.
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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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Possibly the words materialism and spirituality express two sides of one and the same fact.
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Neither the passions not justice nor politics nor the great social forces ever consider the victims they strike.
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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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The key to all sciences is unquestionably the question mark. To the word How? we owe most of our greatest discoveries. Wisdom in life may perhaps consist in asking ourselves on all occasions: Why?
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Love passes quickly, and passes like a street Arab, anxious to mark his way with mischief.
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Friendships last when each friend thinks he has a slight superiority over the other.