Honore de Balzac Quotes
-
There is nothing original; all is reflected light.
-
Le mariage doit incessamment combattre un monstre qui de v ore tout: l'habitude. Marriage should always combat the monster that devours everything: habit.
-
Genius is answerable only to itself; it is the sole judge of the means, since it alone knows the end; thus genius must consider itself as above the law, for it is the task of genius to remake the law; moreover the man who frees himself from his time and place may take everything, hazard everything, for everything is his by right.
-
We are scarcely apt to berate the source of enjoyment.
-
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.
-
Love may be the fairest gem which Society has filched from Nature; but what is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood? A smile has dried my tears.
-
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.
-
The world will avenge itself upon all happiness in which it has no share.
-
Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love.
-
It is easier for a woman to be a good wife than a good mother. A widow has two duties with contrary obligations: she is a mother and she must exercise paternal authority. Few woman are strong enough to understand and to play this role.
-
There is something great and terrible about suicide.
-
Some troubles, like a protested note of a solvent debtor, bear interest.
-
I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race.
-
Equality may be the law, but no human power can install it.
-
Rich women need not fear old age; their gold can always create about them any feelings necessary to their happiness.
-
The endless legacy of the past to the present is the secret source of human genius.
-
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?
-
Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.
-
Conscience is a cudgel which all men pick up in order to thwack their neighbors instead of applying it to their own shoulders.
-
Women are ever the dupes or the victims of their extreme sensitiveness.
-
The Police and the Society of Jesus posses in common the virtue of never forsaking their enemies as friends.
-
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.
-
Little minds find satisfaction for their feelings, good or bad, in little things.
-
There is a cure for temptation. What? Yielding to it.