Honore de Balzac Quotes
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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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Virtue in women is perhaps a question of temperament.
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Women are as they are; they necessarily have the defects of their virtues.
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The glutton is much more than an animal and much less than a man.
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The woman who is about to deceive her husband always carefully thinks out how she is going to act, but she is never logical.
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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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But woman brings disorder into society through passion.
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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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All poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things.
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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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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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The future of a nation lies in the hands of mothers.
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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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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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Some troubles, like a protested note of a solvent debtor, bear interest.
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The world will avenge itself upon all happiness in which it has no share.
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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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Noble hearts are neither jealous nor afraid because jealousy spells doubt and fear spells pettiness.
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Clothes are like a gloss that sets off everything; dresser were invented more to enhance physical advantages than to veil physical defects.
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Rich women need not fear old age; their gold can always create about them any feelings necessary to their happiness.
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Misfortune, no less than happiness, inspires us to dream.
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The most real of all splendors are not in outward things, they are within us.
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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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There is something great and terrible about suicide.