Honore de Balzac Quotes
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I prefer thought to action, an idea to a transaction, contemplation to activity.
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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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People who climb from one rung of society to another can never do anything simply.
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Our happiness often depends upon social hypocrisies to which we will never stoop.
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Marriage is an institution necessary to the maintenance of society but contrary to the laws of nature.
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When you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt.
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Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society.
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L'amour n'est pas seulement un sentiment, il est un art aussi. Love is not only a feeling; it is also an art.
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To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.
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The most virtuous women have within them something that is never chaste.
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A jealous husband doesnt doubt his wife, but himself.
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Women are ever the dupes or the victims of their extreme sensitiveness.
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Woman is stronger by virtue of her feelings than man by virtue of his power.
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No husband will ever be better avenged than by his wife's lover.
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The press is like a woman: sublime when it lies, it will not let go until it has forced you to believe it. The public, like a foolish husband, always succumbs.
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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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With every one, the expectation of a misfortune constitutes a dreadful, punishment. Suffering then assumes the proportions of the unknown, which is the soul's infinite.
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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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True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure.
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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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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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Virtue is not a thing you can have by halves; it is or it is not.
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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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It's catastrophies which turn wise and strong people into philosophers.