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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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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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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Virtually all men of action incline to Fatality just as most thinkers incline to Providence.
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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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To promote laughter without joining in it greatly heightens the effect.
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Where poverty ceases, avarice begins.
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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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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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The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman emancipation means corruption.
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Love is the most melodious of all harmonies.
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Inspiration is the opportunity of genius.
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Great minds always tend to see virtue in misfortune.
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Everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination's orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink - for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder.
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Love is a game in which one always cheats.
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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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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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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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Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt.
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A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.
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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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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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The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.