Honore de Balzac Quotes
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Conventions are often more cruel than the law.
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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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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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Equality may be the law, but no human power can install it.
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They [twin beds] are the most stupid, the most perfidious, and the most dangerous invention in the world. Shame and a curse on who thought of them.
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We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.
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With monuments as with men, position means everything.
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It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.
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Women are happy to possess a man whom all women covet.
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A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over.
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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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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.
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Tradesmen regard an author with a mixed feeling of terror, compassion and curiosity.
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Noble hearts are neither jealous nor afraid because jealousy spells doubt and fear spells pettiness.
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It is as easy to dream a book as it is hard to write one.
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A vocation is born to us all; happily most of us meet promptly our twin,--occupation.
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Men who pay their tailors never amount to anything, they never even become Cabinet ministers.
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The love of nature is the only love that does not deceive human hopes.
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The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, forgotten because it was properly done.
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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.
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The woman you buy takes a great deal of money. The woman who gives herself to you takes all your money.
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To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.
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A mother who is really a mother is never free.
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The first thing necessary to win the heart of a woman is opportunity.