Honore de Balzac Quotes
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Nothing is irredeemably ugly but sin.
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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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Are not our noblest feelings as it were the poems of our will.
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Sometimes, one gesture comprises an entire drama, the accent of one word ruins an entire existence, and the indifference of one glance kills the happiest passion.
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In a world of hunchbacks, a fine figure becomes a monstrosity.
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Many people claim coffee inspires them, but, as everybody knows, coffee only makes boring people even more boring.
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Unintelligent persons are like weeds that thrive in good ground; they love to be amused in proportion to the degree in which they weary themselves.
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Study lends a kind of enchantment to all our surroundings.
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A monster which devours everything - that is familiarity.
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Nowhere but in France are people so strictly observant of great matters and so disdainfully indulgent about small ones.
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Every moment of happiness requires a great amount of Ignorance.
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Friendships last when each friend thinks he has a slight superiority over the other.
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The woman who is about to deceive her husband always carefully thinks out how she is going to act, but she is never logical.
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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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As a rule, only the poor are generous.
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The union of a want and a sentiment.
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Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true.
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Love passes quickly, and passes like a street Arab, anxious to mark his way with mischief.
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The impossible is justified by the fact that it occurred.
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Few men are raised in our estimation by being too closely examined.
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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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Journalism is a giant catapult set in motion by pigmy hatreds.
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To lese-majeste and contempt of court, we must add the crime of lese-million, that fearful indignity we visit on the rich when we expose the impotence of gold.
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A lui la foi, a' elle le doute, a' elle le fardeau le plus lourd: la femme ne souffre-t-elle pas toujours pour deux? For him, faith; for her, doubt and for her theheavier load: does not the woman always suffer for both?