Honore de Balzac Quotes
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Equality may be the law, but no human power can install it.
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Some troubles, like a protested note of a solvent debtor, bear interest.
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Women are ever the dupes or the victims of their extreme sensitiveness.
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Talent is a flame, but genius is a fire.
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For businessmen, the world is a bale of banknotes in circulation; for most young men, it is a woman; for some women, it is a man; and for others it may be a salon, a coterie, a part of town or a whole city.
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Such is life. It is no cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands; the real art is in getting them clean again, and therein lies the whole morality of our epoch.
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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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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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People who are in love suspect nothing or everything.
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A courage which looks easy & yet is rare; the courage of a teacher repeating day after day the same lessons - the least rewarded of all forms of courage.
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Friendships last when each friend thinks he has a slight superiority over the other.
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In the first woman we love, we love everything. Growing older, we love the woman only.
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In Paris, the greatest expression of personal satisfaction known to man is the smirk on the face of a male, highly pleased with himself as he leaves the boudoir of a lady.
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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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There is nothing original; all is reflected light.
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The key to all sciences is unquestionably the question mark. To the word How? we owe most of our greatest discoveries. Wisdom in life may perhaps consist in asking ourselves on all occasions: Why?
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In a world of hunchbacks, a fine figure becomes a monstrosity.
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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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The first thing necessary to win the heart of a woman is opportunity.
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All genuinely noble women prefer truth to falsehood. As the Russians with their Czar, they are unwilling to see their idol degraded; they want to be proud of the domination they accept.
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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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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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Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true.
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It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.