Honore de Balzac Quotes
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I am a galley slave to pen and ink.
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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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Society proceeds like the ocean. After a disaster, it resume its wonted level and rhythms; its devouring interests efface all traces of damage.
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Marriage is a fierce battle before which the two partners ask heaven for its blessing, because loving each other is the most audacious of enterprises; the battle is not slow to start, and victory, that is to say freedom, goes to the cleverest.
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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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Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love.
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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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The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.
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By and large, women have a faith and a morality peculiar to themselves; they believe in the reality of everything that serves their interest and their passions.
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The endless legacy of the past to the present is the secret source of human genius.
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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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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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Few men are raised in our estimation by being too closely examined.
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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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Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.
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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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Conventions are often more cruel than the law.
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Men who pay their tailors never amount to anything, they never even become Cabinet ministers.
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Imaginative, sanguine men will never recognize that in negotiations the most dangerous moment of all is when everything is moving according to their wishes.
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Beaucoup d'hommes ont un orgueil qui les pousse a' cacher leurs combats et a' ne se montrer que victorieux. Many men have pride that causes them to hide their combats and to only show themselves victorious.
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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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Emulation is not rivalry. Emulation is the child of ambition; rivalry is the unlovable daughter of envy.
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Tradesmen regard an author with a mixed feeling of terror, compassion and curiosity.
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To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure.