Honore de Balzac Quotes
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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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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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Like most young people, these two attributed to the world their own intelligence and virtues. Youth who knows no failure has no mercy on the faults of other people; but it has also a sublime faith in them.
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On the moral plane, true friends enjoy the same protection as the sense of smell confers upon dogs. They scent the sorrow of their friends, they divine its causes, and they clasp it to their minds and hearts.
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In the first woman we love, we love everything. Growing older, we love the woman only.
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Nobody loves a woman because she is handsome or ugly, stupid or intelligent. We love because we love.
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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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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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Danger arouses interest. Where death is involved, the vilest criminal invariably stirs a little compassion.
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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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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?
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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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Talent is a flame, but genius is a fire.
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Does anyone know where these gondolas of Paris come from? [Fr., Ne sait on pas ou viennent ces gondoles Parisiennes?]
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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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Music is of two kinds: one petty, poor, second-rate, never varying, its base the hundred or so phrasings which all musicians understand, a babbling which is more or less pleasant, the life that most composers live.
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Women are as they are; they necessarily have the defects of their virtues.
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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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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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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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The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.
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A vocation is born to us all; happily most of us meet promptly our twin,--occupation.
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In a world of hunchbacks, a fine figure becomes a monstrosity.