Honore de Balzac Quotes
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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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Love is the only way on which even the dim-witted reaches certain heights.
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Woman has this in common with angels, that suffering beings belong especially to her.
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I believe in the incomprehensibility of God.
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Cruelty and fear shake hands together.
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Vice is perhaps a desire to learn everything.
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Clouds signify the veil of the Most High.
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Love based upon money and vanity forms the most stubborn of passions.
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Grief ennobles the commonest people because it has its own essential grandeur. To shine with the luster of grief, a person need only be sincere.
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Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society.
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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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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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Memories beautify life, but the capacity to forget makes it bearable.
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No frozen-hearted woman ever I laid eyes on but has made duty her religion.
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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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Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity.
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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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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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Old maids claw as cats do. They not only inflict wounds but experience pleasure in doing so. Nor will they fail to remind their victims of the blood drawn.
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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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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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Love and work have the virtues of making a man pretty indifferent to anything else.
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Men are perfectly willing to abandon a woman but they refuse to be abandoned by her.