Honore de Balzac Quotes
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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.
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Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.
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There are no principles; there are only events. There is no good and bad, there are only circumstances.
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A man wastes his time going to hear some of our eloquent modern preachers; they may change his opinions, but never his conduct.
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Virtually all men of action incline to Fatality just as most thinkers incline to Providence.
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Poles offer a mobility like that of the wind that blows over the immense plains and marches of Poland. Show a Pole a precipice, and he will leap headlong over it.
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For a sick man the world begins at his pillow and ends at the foot of his bed.
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Liberty begets anarchy, anarchy leads to despotism, and despotism brings about liberty once again. Millions of human beings have perished without being able to make any of these systems triumph.
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Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society?
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Whereas scoundrels become reconciled after knifing one another, lovers break up irrevocably over a mere glance or word.
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No woman allows her lover to descend from his pedestal. Even a god is not forgiven the slightest pettiness.
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Marriage is a fight to the death. Before contracting it, the two parties concerned implore the benediction of Heaven because to promise to love each other forever is the rashest of enterprises.
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Coffee falls into the stomach... ideas begin to move, things remembered arrive at full gallop... the shafts of wit start up like sharp-shooters, similes arise, the paper is covered with ink...
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What a thing of fantasy a woman may become after dusk.
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Happiness lends poetic charms to woman, and dress adorns her like a delicate tinge of rouge.
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No hawk swooping down upon his prey, no stag improvising new detours by which to trick the huntsman, no dog scenting game from afar is comparable in speed to the celerity of a salesman when he gets wind a deal, to his skill in tripping up or forestalling a rival, and to the art with which he sniffs out and discovers a possible sale.
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Time is the only capital of those who just have their inteligence as fortune.
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One day, about the middle of July 1838, one of the carriages, lately introduced to Paris cabstands, and known as Milords, was driving down the Rue de l'Universite, conveying a stout man of middle height in the uniform of a captain of the National Guard.
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Our energies are often stimulated by the necessity of supporting a being weaker than ourselves.
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Women see everything or nothing according to the inclination of their hearts. Love is their sole light.
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The national budget is not a safe-deposit box. It is a spray can.
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A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.
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Rich men are resolved to be astonished at nothing. When they see a masterpiece, they must needs at one glance recognize some flaw to dispense them from admiration, a vulgar emotion.
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God reveals Himself, unfailingly, to the solitary, thoughtful seeker.