Honore de Balzac Quotes
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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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Love is the most melodious of all harmonies.
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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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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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Forgetting is the great secret of strong and creative lives.
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We must certainly acknowledge that solitude is a fine thing; but it is a pleasure to have some one who can answer, and to whom we can say, from time to time, that solitude is a fine thing.
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Poets and men of action differ: the former yield to their feelings in order to reproduce them in lively colors, and therefore judge only ex post facto; the latter feel and judge at one and the same time.
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Any man, however blase or depraved, finds his love kindled anew when he sees himself threatened by a rival.
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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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Where poverty ceases, avarice begins.
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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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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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Inspiration is the opportunity of genius.
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The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman emancipation means corruption.
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To forget is the great secret of strong creative natures; to forget is the way nature herself who knows no past and who at every hour begins the mysteries of her untiring labors afresh.
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If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.
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How sternly we reproach virtue for its failings, how indulgent we are to the better qualities of vice!
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A woman in love has full intelligence of her power; the more virtuous she is, the more effective her coquetry.
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Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it.
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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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To promote laughter without joining in it greatly heightens the effect.
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There are as many mediocrities exalted through pity as masters decried through envy.
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Among fifty percent of your married couples, the husband worries very little about what his wife is doing, provided she is doing all he wishes.
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Love is a game in which one always cheats.