Honore de Balzac Quotes
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Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society.
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Woman is stronger by virtue of her feelings than man by virtue of his power.
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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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Does anyone know where these gondolas of Paris come from? [Fr., Ne sait on pas ou viennent ces gondoles Parisiennes?]
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A woman's greatest charm consists in a constant appeal to a man's generosity by a gracious declaration of helplessness which fills him with pride and awakens the most magnificent feelings in his heart.
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Virtue is not a thing you can have by halves; it is or it is not.
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A husband can commit no greater blunder than to discuss his wife, if she is virtuous, with his mistress; unless it be to mention his mistress, if she is beautiful, to his wife.
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No husband will ever be better avenged than by his wife's lover.
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To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.
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Foppery, being the chronic condition of women, is not so much noticed as it is when it breaks out on the person of the male bird.
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The happier a man, the more apt he is to tremble. In hearts exclusively tender, anxiety and jealousy are in exact proportion to happiness.
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She who is really a wife, one in heart, flesh, and bone, must follow wherever he leads, in whom her life, her strength, her pride, and happiness are centered.
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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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People who climb from one rung of society to another can never do anything simply.
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As a rule, only the poor are generous.
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A jealous husband doesnt doubt his wife, but himself.
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There are houses in certain provincial towns whose aspect inspires melancholy, akin to that called forth by sombre cloisters, dreary moorlands, or the desolation of ruins. Within these houses there is, perhaps, the silence of the cloister, the barrenness of moors, the skeleton of ruins; life and movement are so stagnant there that a stranger might think them uninhabited, were it not that he encounters suddenly the pale, cold glance of a motionless person, whose half-monastic face peers beyond the window-casing at the sound of an unaccustomed step.
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Love based upon money and vanity forms the most stubborn of passions.
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Only when one has learned to acknowledge that wiser minds have made better words to come out of our mouths may we truly, then, begin to speak them.
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Woman has this in common with angels, that suffering beings belong especially to her.
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It's catastrophies which turn wise and strong people into philosophers.
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Love is perhaps no more than gratitude for pleasure.
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Yes, I can understand that a man might go to a gambling table when he sees that all that lies between him and death is his last crown.
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True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure.