Honore de Balzac Quotes
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Wisdom is that apprehension of heavenly things to which the spirit rises through love.
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Marriage must perforce fight against the all-devouring monster of habit.
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The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.
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Men die in despair, while spirits die in ecstasy.
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Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it.
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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.
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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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A woman in love has full intelligence of her power; the more virtuous she is, the more effective her coquetry.
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Envy is the most stupid of vices, for there is no single advantage to be gained from it.
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There are as many mediocrities exalted through pity as masters decried through envy.
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But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.
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A murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his vileness pervades every moment of his life.
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Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.
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Priests, magistrates and ladies never quite take off their gowns.
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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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What makes friendship indissolute and what doubles its charms is a feeling we find lacking in love: I mean certitude.
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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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Remorse is impotence, impotence which sins again. Repentance alone is powerful; it ends all.
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Old men are prone to invest the futures of young men with their own past sorrows.
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What is art? Nature concentrated.
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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.
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A married woman is a slave you must know how to seat upon a throne.
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There is no such thing as a great talent without great will power.
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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.