Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.
Honore de BalzacPoets and men of action differ: the former yield to their feelings in order to reproduce them in lively colors, and therefore judge only ex post facto; the latter feel and judge at one and the same time.
Honore de BalzacThere are no little events with the heart. It magnifies everything; it places in the same scales the fall of an empire of fourteen years and the dropping of a woman's glove, and almost always the glove weighs more than the empire.
Honore de Balzac