Honore de Balzac Quotes
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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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Such is life. It is no cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands; the real art is in getting them clean again, and therein lies the whole morality of our epoch.
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When attempted self-destruction does not cure a man of life, it cures him of voluntary death.
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Women are happy to possess a man whom all women covet.
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A lui la foi, a' elle le doute, a' elle le fardeau le plus lourd: la femme ne souffre-t-elle pas toujours pour deux? For him, faith; for her, doubt and for her theheavier load: does not the woman always suffer for both?
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Noble hearts are neither jealous nor afraid because jealousy spells doubt and fear spells pettiness.
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Does anyone know where these gondolas of Paris come from? [Fr., Ne sait on pas ou viennent ces gondoles Parisiennes?]
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Women themselves are so happy, and so beautiful, when they're strong, that they naturally choose powerful men, even if that power's so enermous there's a real risk it could shatter them.
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Innocence alone dares commit certain acts of audacity. Virtue, when tutored, is as calculating as vice.
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It is as easy to dream a book as it is hard to write one.
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Lofty souls are always inclined to make a virtue of misfortune.
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The future of a nation lies in the hands of mothers.
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A vocation is born to us all; happily most of us meet promptly our twin,--occupation.
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To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.
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Everything is bilateral in the domain of thought. Ideas are binary. Janus is the myth of criticism and the symbol of genius. Only God is triangular!
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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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When chaste people need body or mind to resort to action or thought, they find steel in their muscles or knowledge in their intelligence. Theirs the diabolic vigor or the black magic of will power.
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If those who are the enemies of innocent amusements had the direction of the world, they would take away the spring, and youth, the former from the year, the latter from human life.
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Our most bitter enemies are our own kith and kin. Kings have no brothers, no sons, no mother!
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Show me the woman, however loyal, who does not seek to rouse desire.
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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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Nothing is unimportant to a man plunged in despair. He is as credulous as a criminal sentenced to death who listens to a lunatic raving to him about how he can escape through the keyhole.
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The country is provincial; it becomes ridiculous when it tries to ape Paris.
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Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.