Honore de Balzac Quotes
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We are never either so wretched or so happy as we say we are.
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Above all do not ask that justice be just: It is just, because it is justice. The idea of a just justice could have originated only in the brain of an anarchist.
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The impossible is justified by the fact that it occurred.
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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.
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The secret of the nobility and beauty of great ladies lies in the art with which they can shed their veils. In such situations, they become like ancient statues. If they kept the merest scarf on, they would be lewd. Your bourgeois woman will always try to cover her nakedness.
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The boor covers himself, the rich man or the fool adorns himself, and the elegant man gets dressed.
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The love of nature is the only love that does not deceive human hopes.
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It is not hope but despair that gives us the measure of our ambitions. We may yield secretly to beautiful poems of hope but grief looms start and stripped of all veils.
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Journalism is a giant catapult set in motion by pigmy hatreds.
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The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.
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Love is a religion, and its rituals cost more than those of other religions. It goes by quickly and, like a street urchin, it likes to mark its passage by a trail of devastation.
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The good we do to others is spoilt unless we efface ourselves so completely that those we help have no sense of inferiority.
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If we all said to people's faces what we say behind one another's backs, society would be impossible.
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Conventions are often more cruel than the law.
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A year at the breast is quite enough; children who are suckled longer are said to grow stupid, and I am all for popular sayings.
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A woman must be a genius to create a good husband.
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Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.
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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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Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.
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Glory and fame mean twelve thousand francs' worth of paid articles in the newspapers and five thousand crowns' worth of dinners.
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It is a singular fact that most men of action incline to the theory of fatalism, while the greater part of men of thought believe in providence.
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To promote laughter without joining in it greatly heightens the effect.
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Marriage must perforce fight against the all-devouring monster of habit.
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While seeking out the dead, I see nothing but the living.