Honore de Balzac Quotes
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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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A husband who submits to his wife's yoke is justly held an object of ridicule. A woman's influence ought to be entirely concealed.
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The most virtuous women have within them something that is never chaste.
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People who climb from one rung of society to another can never do anything simply.
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It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.
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A mother who is really a mother is never free.
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Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness.
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Temperament is the thermometer of character.
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Misfortune, no less than happiness, inspires us to dream.
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No husband will ever be better avenged than by his wife's lover.
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Virtue is not a thing you can have by halves; it is or it is not.
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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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Evasion is unworthy of us, and is always the intimate of equivocation.
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Woman is stronger by virtue of her feelings than man by virtue of his power.
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A woman questions the man who loves exactly as a judge questions a criminal. This being so, a flash of the eye, a mere word, an inflection of the voice or a moment's hesitation suffice to expose the fact, betrayal or crime he is attempting to conceal.
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A jealous husband doesnt doubt his wife, but himself.
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Love based upon money and vanity forms the most stubborn of passions.
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The man who enters his wife's dressing room is either a philosopher or a fool.
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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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Marriage is a fight to the death, before which the wedded couple ask a blessing from heaven, because it is the rashest of all undertakings to swear eternal love; the fight at once commences and victory, that is to say liberty, remains in the hands of the cleverer of the two.
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Love is the only way on which even the dim-witted reaches certain heights.
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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 man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.
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A grass blade believes that men build palaces for it to grow in. Grass wedges its way between the closest blocks of marble and it brings them down. This power of feeble life which can creep in anywhere is greater than that of the mighty behind their cannons.