Honore de Balzac Quotes
-
We cannot confront solitude without moral resources.
-
In the medical profession a horse and carriage are more necessary than any scientific knowledge.
-
Can you find a man who loves the occupation that provides him with a livelihood? Professions are like marriages; we end by feeling only their inconveniences.
-
When there is an old maid in the house, a watchdog is unnecessary.
-
To promote laughter without joining in it greatly heightens the effect.
-
Glory is a poison, good to be taken in small doses.
-
Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.
-
No woman allows her lover to descend from his pedestal. Even a god is not forgiven the slightest pettiness.
-
Gratitude is a fool's word; we find it in the dictionary, but it is not in the heart of man.
-
By resorting to self-resignation, the unfortunate consummate.
-
How sternly we reproach virtue for its failings, how indulgent we are to the better qualities of vice!
-
Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society?
-
Like hunger, physical love is a necessity. But man's appetite for amour is never so regular or so sustained as his appetite for the delights of the table.
-
Great minds always tend to see virtue in misfortune.
-
Vulgar souls look hastily and superficially at the sea and accuse it of monotony; other more privileged beings could spend a lifetime admiring it and discovering new and changing phenomena that delight them. So it is with love.
-
A man is a poor creature compared to a woman.
-
Man is no match for woman where mischief reigns.
-
Hatred like love feeds on the merest trifles. Everything adds to it. Just as the being we love can do no wrong, so the one we hate can do no right.
-
To get a traveling salesman drunk is the height of impossibility.
-
The innocence of virgins is like milk which turns when exposed to a clap of thunder, to a tart smell, to a hot day, to the merest nothing.
-
The great secret of social alchemy is to profit best from each stage in our lives, to gather all its leaves in spring, all its flowers in summer, and all its fruits in autumn.
-
A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.
-
Fools gain greater advantages through their weakness than intelligent men through their strength. We watch a great man struggling against fate and we do not lift a finger to help him. But we patronize a grocer who is headed for bankruptcy.
-
Men die in despair, while spirits die in ecstasy.