Honore de Balzac Quotes
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Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.
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Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.
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Misfortune, no less than happiness, inspires us to dream.
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A woman's sentimental monkeyshines will always deceive her lover, who invariably waxes ecstatic where her husband necessarily shrugs his shoulders.
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The winter's frost must rend the burr of the nut before the fruit is seen. So adversity tempers the human heart, to discover its real worth.
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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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Le mariage doit incessamment combattre un monstre qui de v ore tout: l'habitude. Marriage should always combat the monster that devours everything: habit.
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A flow of words is a sure sign of duplicity.
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Virtue in women is perhaps a question of temperament.
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To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.
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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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There is something great and terrible about suicide.
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All poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things.
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The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, forgotten because it was properly done.
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Equality may be the law, but no human power can install it.
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Despotism accomplishes great things illegally; liberty doesn't even go to the trouble of accomplishing small things legally.
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Some troubles, like a protested note of a solvent debtor, bear interest.
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Women are always true, even in the midst of their greatest falsities, because they are always influenced by some natural feeling.
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The glutton is much more than an animal and much less than a man.
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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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Noble hearts are neither jealous nor afraid because jealousy spells doubt and fear spells pettiness.
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Women are happy to possess a man whom all women covet.
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Noble passions are like vices: the more they are satisfied, the greater they grow, Mothers and gamblers are insatiable.
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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.