Honore de Balzac Quotes
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There is a cure for temptation. What? Yielding to it.
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Love may be the fairest gem which Society has filched from Nature; but what is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood? A smile has dried my tears.
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He's got his dog trained so that it only does it on newspapers. The trouble is it does it when he's reading the blasted things.
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Woman is a most charming creature, who changes her heart as easily as she does her gloves.
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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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In a world of hunchbacks, a fine figure becomes a monstrosity.
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Give to a wounded heart seclusion; consolation nor reason ever effected anything in such a case.
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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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No woman has ever existed who did not know perfectly well in her heart what to expect from the superiority or inferiority of a rival.
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Love is precisely to the moral nature what the sun is to the earth.
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Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.
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Hope is a memory that desires, the memory is a memory that has enjoyed.
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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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I am a galley slave to pen and ink.
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Le mariage doit incessamment combattre un monstre qui de v ore tout: l'habitude. Marriage should always combat the monster that devours everything: habit.
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Equality may be the law, but no human power can install it.
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An ugly woman, married to King Henry VIII, would have defied the axe and daunted her husband's infidelities.
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Conscience is a cudgel which all men pick up in order to thwack their neighbors instead of applying it to their own shoulders.
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A lover teaches a wife all her husband has kept from her.
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Women, perhaps even require a little hypocrisy.
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Sensuality is the death of the soul.
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Towns find it as hard as houses of business to rise again from ruin.
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Little minds find satisfaction for their feelings, good or bad, in little things.
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We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.