Honore de Balzac Quotes
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Want him to be more of a man? Try being more of a woman!
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Love is precisely to the moral nature what the sun is to the earth.
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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.
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In a world of hunchbacks, a fine figure becomes a monstrosity.
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A woman in the depths of despair proves so persuasive that she wrenches the forgiveness lurking deep in the heart of her lover. This is all the more true when that woman is young, pretty, and so decollete as to emerge from the neck of her gown in the costume of Eve.
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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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To lese-majeste and contempt of court, we must add the crime of lese-million, that fearful indignity we visit on the rich when we expose the impotence of gold.
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For pain is perhaps but a violent pleasure? Who could determine the point where pleasure becomes pain, where pain is still a pleasure? Is not the utmost brightness of the ideal world soothing to us, while the lightest shadows of the physical world annoy?
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The woman who is about to deceive her husband always carefully thinks out how she is going to act, but she is never logical.
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Sensuality is the death of the soul.
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Friendships last when each friend thinks he has a slight superiority over the other.
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But woman brings disorder into society through passion.
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By and large, women have a faith and a morality peculiar to themselves; they believe in the reality of everything that serves their interest and their passions.
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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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Sometimes at the best moments a single word or a look is enough.
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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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Discouragement is of all ages: In youth it is a presentiment, in old age a remembrance.
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Virtue in women is perhaps a question of temperament.
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The duration of a couple's passion is in proportion to the woman's original resistance or to the obstacles that social hazards have placed in the way of her happiness.
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Creole women take after Europe in their intelligence, after the Tropics in the illogical violence of their passions, and after the Indies in the apathetic indolence with which they commit or suffer good and evil.
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The most real of all splendors are not in outward things, they are within us.
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Economized love is never real love.
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With monuments as with men, position means everything.
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In the first woman we love, we love everything. Growing older, we love the woman only.