Honore de Balzac Quotes
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A lover always thinks of his mistress first and himself second; with a husband it runs the other way.
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Despotism accomplishes great things illegally; liberty doesn't even go to the trouble of accomplishing small things legally.
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It is as easy to dream a book as it is hard to write one.
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Equality may be the law, but no human power can install it.
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The man who enters his wife's dressing room is either a philosopher or a fool.
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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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Noble passions are like vices: the more they are satisfied, the greater they grow, Mothers and gamblers are insatiable.
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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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A vocation is born to us all; happily most of us meet promptly our twin,--occupation.
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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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The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.
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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.
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With monuments as with men, position means everything.
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One admirable trait in women is their lack of illusions about themselves. They never reason about their most blameworthy actions; their feelings carry them away. Even their dissimulation comes naturally to them, and in them crime is free of all baseness. Most of the time they simply do not know how it happened.
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To feel, to love, to suffer, to devote herself, will always be the text of the life of woman.
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Men who pay their tailors never amount to anything, they never even become Cabinet ministers.
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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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Conventions are often more cruel than the law.
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At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist; there can only be promise of the coming woman.
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The first thing necessary to win the heart of a woman is opportunity.
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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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There is neither vice nor virtue, there are only circumstances.
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Tradesmen regard an author with a mixed feeling of terror, compassion and curiosity.
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To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.