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The response man has the greatest difficulty in tolerating is pity, especially when he warrants it. Hatred is a tonic, it makes one live, it inspires vengeance, but pity kills, it makes our weakness weaker.
Honore de Balzac -
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.
Honore de Balzac
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Can you find a man who loves the occupation that provides him with a livelihood? Professions are like marriages; we end by feeling only their inconveniences.
Honore de Balzac -
Unintelligent persons are like weeds that thrive in good ground; they love to be amused in proportion to the degree in which they weary themselves.
Honore de Balzac -
Paris, like every pretty woman, is subject to inexplicable whims of beauty and ugliness.
Honore de Balzac -
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.
Honore de Balzac -
Study lends a kind of enchantment to all our surroundings.
Honore de Balzac -
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...
Honore de Balzac
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Most women wish to feel that their spirit has been violated. Do they not, indeed, flatter themselves on never yielding save to force?
Honore de Balzac -
Passions are no more forgiving than human laws and they reason more justly. Are they not based on a conscience of their own, infallible as an instinct?
Honore de Balzac -
Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society?
Honore de Balzac -
A great love is a credit opened in favor of a power so consuming that the moment of bankruptcy must inevitably occur.
Honore de Balzac -
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.
Honore de Balzac -
Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane.
Honore de Balzac
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I'm a great poet. I don't put my poems on paper: they consist of actions and feelings.
Honore de Balzac -
This coffee falls into your stomach, and straightway there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army of the battlefield, and the battle takes place. Things remembered arrive at full gallop, ensuing to the wind. The light cavalry of comparisons deliver a magnificent deploying charge, the artillery of logic hurry up with their train and ammunition, the shafts of with start up like sharpshooters. Similes arise, the paper is covered with ink; for the struggle commences and is concluded with torrents of black water, just as a battle with powder.
Honore de Balzac -
One hour of love has a whole life in it.
Honore de Balzac -
The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman emancipation means corruption.
Honore de Balzac -
Narrow minds can develop as well through persecution as through benevolence; they can assure themselves of their power by tyrannizing cruelly or beneficially over others.
Honore de Balzac -
God reveals Himself, unfailingly, to the solitary, thoughtful seeker.
Honore de Balzac
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If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one ... he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent.
Honore de Balzac -
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.
Honore de Balzac -
A flow of words is a sure sign of duplicity.
Honore de Balzac -
A deist is an atheist with an eye cocked for the off-chance of some advantage.
Honore de Balzac