Honore de Balzac Quotes
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Beauty is the greatest of human powers. Any power without counterbalance or control becomes autocratic and leads to abuse and to folly. Despotism in a government is insanity; in woman, fantasy.
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Our happiness often depends upon social hypocrisies to which we will never stoop.
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Virtue, perhaps, is nothing more than politeness of soul.
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Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.
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Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.
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Man can start with aversion and end with love, but if he begins with love and comes round to aversion he will never get back to love.
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Most geometricians, chemists, mathematicians, and great scientists submit religion to reason only to discover a problem as unsolvable as that of squaring a circle.
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No husband will ever be better avenged than by his wife's lover.
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Do you know how a man makes his way here? By brilliant genius or by skilful corruption. You must either cut your way through these masses of men like a cannon ball, or steal among them like a plague.
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A jealous husband doesnt doubt his wife, but himself.
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I can no longer think of anything but you. In spite of myself, my imagination carries me to you. I grasp you, I kiss you, I caress you, a thousand of the most amorous caresses take possession of me.
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A husband and wife who are in the habit of occupying separate rooms are either beings apart, or they have found happiness. Either they hate or they adore each other.
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When we drink coffee, ideas march in like the army.
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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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Marriage must fight constantly against a monster which devours everything: routine.
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Genuine sorrows are very tranquil in appearance in the deep bed they have dug for themselves. But, seeming to slumber, they corrode the soul like that frightful acid which penetrates crystal.
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True love rules especially through memory.
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When you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt.
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Clouds signify the veil of the Most High.
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Physically, a man is a man for a much longer time than a woman is a woman.
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No woman dares to refuse love without a motive, for nothing is more natural than to yield to love.
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With a woman, always make good use of a secret. She will be proportionally grateful to you, like a scoundrel who grants his respect to an honest man he has been unable to swindle.
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Le coeur d'une me' re est un ab|"me au fond duquel se trouve toujours un pardon. A mother'sheart isanabyss atthebottomof whichthere is always forgiveness.
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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.