Honore de Balzac Quotes
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To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure.
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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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Talent is a flame, but genius is a fire.
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We are scarcely apt to berate the source of enjoyment.
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Beaucoup d'hommes ont un orgueil qui les pousse a' cacher leurs combats et a' ne se montrer que victorieux. Many men have pride that causes them to hide their combats and to only show themselves victorious.
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Sometimes at the best moments a single word or a look is enough.
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When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great, they will fall upon the rich.
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Those who spend too fast never grow rich.
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A lover teaches a wife all her husband has kept from her.
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Hope is a memory that desires, the memory is a memory that has enjoyed.
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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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Some troubles, like a protested note of a solvent debtor, bear interest.
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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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I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race.
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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 country is provincial; it becomes ridiculous when it tries to ape Paris.
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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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Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.
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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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Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness.
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All poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things.
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Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.
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There is something great and terrible about suicide.
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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.