Honore de Balzac Quotes
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Sometimes, one gesture comprises an entire drama, the accent of one word ruins an entire existence, and the indifference of one glance kills the happiest passion.
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Virtue in women is perhaps a question of temperament.
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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 motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.
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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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Woman is a most charming creature, who changes her heart as easily as she does her gloves.
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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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I am a galley slave to pen and ink.
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Conventions are often more cruel than the law.
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People who are in love suspect nothing or everything.
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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 glutton is much more than an animal and much less than a man.
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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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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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The most real of all splendors are not in outward things, they are within us.
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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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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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Noble hearts are neither jealous nor afraid because jealousy spells doubt and fear spells pettiness.
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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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But woman brings disorder into society through passion.
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In love, what a woman mistakes for disgust is actually clearsightedness. If she does not admire a man, she scorns him.
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The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, forgotten because it was properly done.