Honore de Balzac Quotes

Love or hatred must constantly increase between two persons who are always together; every moment fresh reasons are found for loving or hating better.

To have one's mother-in-law in the country when one lives in Paris, and vice versa, is one of those strokes of luck that one encounters only too rarely.

Men who pay their tailors never amount to anything, they never even become Cabinet ministers.

The prodigality of millionaires is comparable only to their greed of gain. Let some whim or passion seize them and money is of no account. In fact these Croesuses find whims and passions harder to come by than gold.

Little minds find satisfaction for their feelings, good or bad, in little things.

When we drink coffee, ideas march in like the army

Marriage is an institution necessary to the maintenance of society but contrary to the laws of nature.

The monotony of provincial life attracts the attention of people to the kitchen. You do not dine as luxuriously in the provinces as in Paris, but you dine better, because the dishes serve you are the result of mediation and study.

A husband can commit no greater blunder than to discuss his wife, if she is virtuous, with his mistress; unless it be to mention his mistress, if she is beautiful, to his wife.

The world will avenge itself upon all happiness in which it has no share.

Women, when they have made a sheep of a man, always tell him that he is a lion with a will of iron.

Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.

By and large, women have a faith and a morality peculiar to themselves; they believe in the reality of everything that serves their interest and their passions.

In the medical profession a horse and carriage are more necessary than any scientific knowledge.

To get a traveling salesman drunk is the height of impossibility.

In France we can cauterize wounds but we do not yet know any remedy for the injuries inflicted by a bon mot.

Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without esteem they cannot exist; esteem is the first demand that they make of love.

Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true.

There is nothing original; all is reflected light.

The duration of a couple's passion is in proportion to the woman's original resistance or to the obstacles that social hazards have placed in the way of her happiness.

Now literary success can only be won in solitude by persevering labor.

If we study Nature attentively in its great evolutions as in its minutest works, we cannot fail to recognize the possibility of enchantment - giving to that word its exact significance.

He who best knows the world will love it least.

Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society.

I yield to your wishes. It is the privilege of the women whom we love more than they love us to make the men who love them ignore the ordinary rules of common-sense.

Love is the reduction of the universe to the single being, and the expansion of a single being, even to God

Men are such dupes by choice, that he who would impose upon others never need be at a loss to find ready victims.

Most women wish to feel that their spirit has been violated. Do they not, indeed, flatter themselves on never yielding save to force?

Most geometricians, chemists, mathematicians, and great scientists submit religion to reason only to discover a problem as unsolvable as that of squaring a circle.

In Paris every man must have had a love affair. What woman wants something that no other woman ever wanted.

Equality may be a right, but no power on earth can convert it into fact.

A great writer is nothing less than a martyr who does not die.

Remorse is impotent; it will repeat its faults. Repentance only is a true force; it puts an end to everything.

For businessmen, the world is a bale of banknotes in circulation; for most young men, it is a woman; for some women, it is a man; and for others it may be a salon, a coterie, a part of town or a whole city.

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.

By dint of making sacrifices, a man grows interested in the person who exacts them. Great ladies, like courtesans, know this truth by instinct.

Love is a game in which one always cheats.

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.

Danger arouses interest. Where death is involved, the vilest criminal invariably stirs a little compassion.

The press is like a woman: sublime when it lies, it will not let go until it has forced you to believe it. The public, like a foolish husband, always succumbs.

As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move…similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle.

Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.

Love knows nothing of modesty.

A husband and wife who are in the habit of occupying separate rooms are either beings apart, or they have found happiness. Either they hate or they adore each other.

Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness.

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.

When chaste people need body or mind to resort to action or thought, they find steel in their muscles or knowledge in their intelligence. Theirs the diabolic vigor or the black magic of will power.

Imagination helps the realism of every detail, and only sees the beauties of the work.