Honore de Balzac Quotes
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In intimate family life, there comes a moment when children, willingly or no, become the judges of their parents.
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How did you get back?' asked Vautrin. 'I walked,' replied Eugene. 'I wouldn't like half-pleasures, myself,' observed the tempter. 'I'd want to go there in my own carriage, have my own box, and come back in comfort. All or nothing, that's my motto.' 'And a very good one,' said Madame Vauquer.
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There are as many mediocrities exalted through pity as masters decried through envy.
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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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True lovers know how trifling a thing is money yet how difficult to blend with love!
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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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A deist is an atheist with an eye cocked for the off-chance of some advantage.
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You may imitate, but never counterfeit.
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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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Love is not only a feeling, it is also an art. A simple word, a sensitive precaution, a mere nothing reveal to a woman the sublime artist who can touch her heart without withering it.
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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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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.
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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.
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A mother's life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears.
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Priests, magistrates and ladies never quite take off their gowns.
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To promote laughter without joining in it greatly heightens the effect.
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Wisdom is that apprehension of heavenly things to which the spirit rises through love.
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The greater a man's talents, the more marked his idiosyncracies. Yet in the provinces originality is considered perilously close to lunacy.
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Old men are prone to invest the futures of young men with their own past sorrows.
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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.
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A country is strong which consists of wealthy families, every member of whom is interested in defending a common treasure; it is weak when composed of scattered individuals, to whom it matters little whether they obey seven or one, a Russian or a Corsican, so long as each keeps his own plot of land, blind in their wretched egotism, to the fact that the day is coming when this too will be torn from them.
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Events are never absolute, their outcome depends entirely upon the individual. Misfortune is a stepping stone for a genius, a piscina for a Christian, a treasure for a man of parts, and an abyss for a weakling.
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Ideas devour the ages as men are devoured by their passions. When man is cured, human nature will cure itself perhaps.
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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.