Honore de Balzac Quotes
-
Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.
-
A woman's sentimental monkeyshines will always deceive her lover, who invariably waxes ecstatic where her husband necessarily shrugs his shoulders.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
We are scarcely apt to berate the source of enjoyment.
-
But woman brings disorder into society through passion.
-
Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true.
-
Innocence alone dares commit certain acts of audacity. Virtue, when tutored, is as calculating as vice.
-
Show me the woman, however loyal, who does not seek to rouse desire.
-
All poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things.
-
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.
-
The woman who is about to deceive her husband always carefully thinks out how she is going to act, but she is never logical.
-
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.
-
I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race.
-
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.
-
Talent is a flame, but genius is a fire.
-
Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.
-
Women are always true, even in the midst of their greatest falsities, because they are always influenced by some natural feeling.
-
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?
-
Sometimes at the best moments a single word or a look is enough.
-
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.
-
Are not our noblest feelings as it were the poems of our will.
-
We have long struggles with ourself, of which the outcome is one of our actions; they are, as it were, the inner side of human nature. This inner side is God's; the outer side belongs to men.