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Law is a silvery web that lets the big flies pass and catches all the small ones.
Honore de Balzac -
When passion is not fed, it changes to need. At this juncture, marriage becomes a fixed idea in the mind of the bourgeois, being the only means whereby he can win a woman and appropriate her to his uses.
Honore de Balzac
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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.
Honore de Balzac -
First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint the second time.
Honore de Balzac -
Men are such dupes by choice, that he who would impose upon others never need be at a loss to find ready victims.
Honore de Balzac -
Bankers are lynxes. To expect any gratitude from them is equivalent to attempting to move the wolves of the Ukraine to pity in the middle of winter.
Honore de Balzac -
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.
Honore de Balzac -
Envy is the most stupid of vices, for there is no single advantage to be gained from it.
Honore de Balzac
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The causes that govern the heart appear to be wholly alien to the results achieved. Are the forces that moved a desperate criminal the same that fill a martyr with pride, as both mount the scaffold?
Honore de Balzac -
The fashions we call English in Paris are French in London, and vice versa. Franco-British hostility vanishes when it comes to questions of words and clothing. God save the King is a tune composed by Lully for a chorus in a play by Racine.
Honore de Balzac -
Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer – Death has never forsaken any man.
Honore de Balzac -
An ounce of courage will go farther with women than a pound of timidity.
Honore de Balzac -
In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.
Honore de Balzac -
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.
Honore de Balzac
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You may imitate, but never counterfeit.
Honore de Balzac -
White and shining virgin of all human virtues, ark of the covenant between earth and heaven, tender and strong companion partaking of the lion and of the lamb, Prayer! Prayer will give you the key of heaven! Bold and pure as innocence, strong, like all that is single and simple, this glorious, invincible Queen rests, nevertheless, on the material world; she takes possession of it; like the sun, she clasps it in a circle of light.
Honore de Balzac -
Hope is a light diet, but very stimulating.
Honore de Balzac -
We must have books for recreation and entertainment, as well as books for instruction and for business; the former are agreeable, the latter useful, and the human mind requires both. The cannon law and the codes of Justinian shall have due honor, and reign at the universities; but Homer and Virgil need not therefore be banished. We will cultivate the olive and the vine, but without eradicating the myrtle and the rose.
Honore de Balzac -
No woman allows her lover to descend from his pedestal. Even a god is not forgiven the slightest pettiness.
Honore de Balzac -
Admiration bestowed upon any one but ourselves is always tedious.
Honore de Balzac
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Old men are prone to invest the futures of young men with their own past sorrows.
Honore de Balzac -
But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.
Honore de Balzac -
Forgetting is the great secret of strong and creative lives.
Honore de Balzac -
A grocer is attracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the repulsion which renders it odious to artists.
Honore de Balzac