Honore de Balzac Quotes
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The habits of life form the soul, and the soul forms the physical presence.
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Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.
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Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.
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Constancy will always be the genius of love, the indication of that strength which constitutes the poet. A man should possess all women in his wife, like those squalid poetasters of the seventeenth century who made fair Irises and dazzling Chloes of their lowly Manons.
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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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A knowledge of mankind and of things that surround us gives us that second education which proves far move valuable than our first because it alone turns out a truly accomplished man.
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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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For the person who loves God, worship is the daily bread of patience.
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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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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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Vice is perhaps a desire to learn everything.
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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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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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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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At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back the esteem she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young girl can only make moan.
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Love is the poetry of the senses.
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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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He who best knows the world will love it least.
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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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Loyalty in time of need is possibly one of the noblest of victories a courtier can win over himself.
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But does not happiness come from the soul within?
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Men are so made that they can resist sound argument, and yet yield to a glance.
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God is the poet; men are but the actors. The great dramas of earth were written in heaven.