Honore de Balzac Quotes
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A Creole woman is like a child, she wants to possess everything immediately; like a child, she would set fire to a house in order to fry an egg. In her languor, she thinks of nothing; when passionately aroused, she thinks of any act possible or impossible.
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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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All we are is in the soul.
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Vice is perhaps a desire to learn everything.
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Men are perfectly willing to abandon a woman but they refuse to be abandoned by her.
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Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.
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Authentic love always assumes the mystery of modesty, even in its expression, because actions speak louder than words. Unlike a feigned love, it feels no need to set a conflagration.
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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 woman filled with faith in the one she loves is the creation of a novelist's imagination.
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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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Is there any instinct more deeply implanted in the heart of man than the pride of protection, a protection which is constantly exerted for a fragile and defenceless creature?
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The passion of love is essentially selfish, while motherhood widens the circle of our feelings.
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My further advice on your relations to women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, "Serve all, love one."
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Love is the poetry of the senses.
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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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But does not happiness come from the soul within?
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Ambitious men spend their youth in rendering themselves worthy of patronage; it is their great mistake. While the foolish creatures are laying in stores of knowledge and energy, so that they shall not sink under the weight of responsible posts that recede from them, schemers come and go who are wealthy in words and destitute of ideas, astonish the ignorant, and creep into the confidence of those who have a little knowledge.
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Loyalty in time of need is possibly one of the noblest of victories a courtier can win over himself.
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A husband and wife who have separate bedrooms have either drifted apart or found happiness.
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Virtue is always too much of a piece and too ignorant of those shades of feeling and of temperament that enable us to squint when we are placed in a false position.
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Ah! What pleasure it must be to a woman to suffer for the one she loves!
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God is the poet; men are but the actors. The great dramas of earth were written in heaven.
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When will conventional good manners become attractive? When will ladies of fashion exhibit their shoulders a little less and their affability and wit a little more?
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Among even the happiest married couples there are always moments of regret.