Honore de Balzac Quotes
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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.
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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 great writer is nothing less than a martyr who does not die.
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For the journalist, anything probable is gospel truth.
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Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings. Virtue in Provence, in Constantinople, in London, and in Paris bears very different fruit, but is none the less virtue.
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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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Paris, like every pretty woman, is subject to inexplicable whims of beauty and ugliness.
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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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A naked woman is less dangerous than one who spreads her skirt skillfully to cover and exhibit everything at once.
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An ounce of courage will go farther with women than a pound of timidity.
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Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.
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Isn't it really quite extraordinary to see that, since man took his first step, no one has asked himself why he walks, how he walks, if he has ever walked, if he could walk better, what he achieves in walking .. questions that are tied to all the philosophical, psychological, and political systems which preoccupy the world.
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It's not enough to be a good person. You also have to show it.
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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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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.
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One hour of love has a whole life in it.
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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.
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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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In intimate family life, there comes a moment when children, willingly or no, become the judges of their parents.
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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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A girl fresh from a boarding school may perhaps be a virgin but no! she is never chaste.
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The impossible is justified by the fact that it occurred.
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You're a fine fastidious young man, as proud as a lion, as gentle as a girl. You'd make a good catch for the devil.
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Admiration bestowed upon any one but ourselves is always tedious.