Honore de Balzac Quotes
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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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Danger arouses interest. Where death is involved, the vilest criminal invariably stirs a little compassion.
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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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A flow of words is a sure sign of duplicity.
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Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true.
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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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Woman is a most charming creature, who changes her heart as easily as she does her gloves.
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Few men are raised in our estimation by being too closely examined.
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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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Neither the passions not justice nor politics nor the great social forces ever consider the victims they strike.
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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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I am a galley slave to pen and ink.
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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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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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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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Possibly the words materialism and spirituality express two sides of one and the same fact.
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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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Nature endows woman alternately with a particular strength which helps her to suffer and a weakness which counsels her to be resigned.
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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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Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.
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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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Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.
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Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.
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People who are in love suspect nothing or everything.