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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 -
Self-interest is an ineffable feeling which shall follow us into God's very presence since they say there is a hierarchy even among the Holy Saints.
Honore de Balzac
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Wisdom is that apprehension of heavenly things to which the spirit rises through love.
Honore de Balzac -
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.
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 -
Thanks to the toleration preached by the encyclopedists of the eighteenth century, the sorcerer is exempt from torture.
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 -
A flow of words is a sure sign of duplicity.
Honore de Balzac
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To forget is the great secret of strong creative natures; to forget is the way nature herself who knows no past and who at every hour begins the mysteries of her untiring labors afresh.
Honore de Balzac -
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.
Honore de Balzac -
What moralist can deny that well-bred and vicious people are much more agreeable than their virtuous counterparts? Having crimes to atone for, they provisionally solicit indulgence by showing leniency toward the defects of their judges. Thus they pass for excellent folk.
Honore de Balzac -
The impossible is justified by the fact that it occurred.
Honore de Balzac -
The union of a want and a sentiment.
Honore de Balzac -
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.
Honore de Balzac
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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.
Honore de Balzac -
Clothes are like a gloss that sets off everything; dresser were invented more to enhance physical advantages than to veil physical defects.
Honore de Balzac -
In love, what a woman mistakes for disgust is actually clearsightedness. If she does not admire a man, she scorns him.
Honore de Balzac -
A girl fresh from a boarding school may perhaps be a virgin but no! she is never chaste.
Honore de Balzac -
In all lands, sailors form a race apart. They profess a congenital contempt for landlubbers. As for the tradesman, he understands nothing of sailors nor cares a fig about them. He is content to rob them if he can.
Honore de Balzac -
The greater a man's talents, the more marked his idiosyncracies. Yet in the provinces originality is considered perilously close to lunacy.
Honore de Balzac
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Danger arouses interest. Where death is involved, the vilest criminal invariably stirs a little compassion.
Honore de Balzac -
The Parisan, sauntering the streets idly, is as often a man in despair as a lounger.
Honore de Balzac -
To stroll is a science, it is the gastronomy of the eye. To walk is to vegetate, to stroll is to live.... To stroll is to enjoy, it is to assume a mind-set, it is to admire the sublime pictures of unhappiness, of love, of joy, of graceful or grotesque portraits; it is to plunge one's vision to the depths of a thousand existences: young, it is to desire everything; old, it is to live the life of the young, to marry their passions.
Honore de Balzac -
Marriage is a fight to the death. Before contracting it, the two parties concerned implore the benediction of Heaven because to promise to love each other forever is the rashest of enterprises.
Honore de Balzac