Honore de Balzac Quotes
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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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Virtually all men of action incline to Fatality just as most thinkers incline to Providence.
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You may imitate, but never counterfeit.
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Men are such dupes by choice, that he who would impose upon others never need be at a loss to find ready victims.
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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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In intimate family life, there comes a moment when children, willingly or no, become the judges of their parents.
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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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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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Old men are prone to invest the futures of young men with their own past sorrows.
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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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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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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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Wisdom is that apprehension of heavenly things to which the spirit rises through love.
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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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Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society?
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An ounce of courage will go farther with women than a pound of timidity.
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A deist is an atheist with an eye cocked for the off-chance of some advantage.
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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.
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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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I'm a great poet. I don't put my poems on paper: they consist of actions and feelings.
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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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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.
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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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Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer – Death has never forsaken any man.