Honore de Balzac Quotes
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Happiness lends poetic charms to woman, and dress adorns her like a delicate tinge of rouge.
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The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.
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Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt.
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Incurable wounds are those inflicted by tongue and eye, by mockery and disdain.
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The prodigality of millionaires is comparable only to their greed of gain. Let some whim or passion seize them and money is of no account. In fact these Croesuses find whims and passions harder to come by than gold.
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Where poverty ceases, avarice begins.
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The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.
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Law is a silvery web that lets the big flies pass and catches all the small ones.
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Inspiration is the opportunity of genius.
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Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.
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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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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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Whereas scoundrels become reconciled after knifing one another, lovers break up irrevocably over a mere glance or word.
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Virtually all men of action incline to Fatality just as most thinkers incline to Providence.
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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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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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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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God reveals Himself, unfailingly, to the solitary, thoughtful seeker.
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Once she has committed sin, there is nothing left for the Protestant woman, whereas the Catholic Church, hope of forgiveness makes a woman sublime.
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It is very difficult to pass from pleasure to work. Accordingly more poems have been swallowed up by sorrow than ever happiness caused to blaze forth in unparalleled radiance.
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Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.
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What makes friendship indissolute and what doubles its charms is a feeling we find lacking in love: I mean certitude.
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If the human heart sometimes finds moments of pause as it ascends the slopes of affection, it rarely halts on the way down.
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No woman allows her lover to descend from his pedestal. Even a god is not forgiven the slightest pettiness.