Honore de Balzac Quotes
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Women are as they are; they necessarily have the defects of their virtues.
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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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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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Does anyone know where these gondolas of Paris come from? [Fr., Ne sait on pas ou viennent ces gondoles Parisiennes?]
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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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Emulation is not rivalry. Emulation is the child of ambition; rivalry is the unlovable daughter of envy.
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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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It is easier for a woman to be a good wife than a good mother. A widow has two duties with contrary obligations: she is a mother and she must exercise paternal authority. Few woman are strong enough to understand and to play this role.
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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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It is a singular fact that most men of action incline to the theory of fatalism, while the greater part of men of thought believe in providence.
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A lover always thinks of his mistress first and himself second; with a husband it runs the other way.
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Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.
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Creole women take after Europe in their intelligence, after the Tropics in the illogical violence of their passions, and after the Indies in the apathetic indolence with which they commit or suffer good and evil.
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Squeeze marriage as much as you like, you will never extract anything from it but fun for bachelors and boredom for husbands.
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Ah! What pleasure it must be to a woman to suffer for the one she loves!
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Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.
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Few men are raised in our estimation by being too closely examined.
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All poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things.
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Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.
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People exaggerate both happiness and unhappiness; we are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people say we are.
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Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.
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The world will avenge itself upon all happiness in which it has no share.
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Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without esteem they cannot exist; esteem is the first demand that they make of love.
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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.