A penniless man who has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless wretch who is in love no longer belongs to himself, and may not take his own life. Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes; it is the life of another that we revere within us; then and so begins for us the cruelest trouble of all.
Honore de BalzacA Creole woman is like a child, she wants to possess everything immediately; like a child, she would set fire to a house in order to fry an egg. In her languor, she thinks of nothing; when passionately aroused, she thinks of any act possible or impossible.
Honore de BalzacMan can start with aversion and end with love, but if he begins with love and comes round to aversion he will never get back to love.
Honore de BalzacWhere some one else's welfare is concerned, a young girl becomes as ingenious as a thief. Guileless where she herself is in question, and full of foresight for me,-she is like a heavenly angel forgiving the strange incomprehensible sins of earth.
Honore de BalzacBetween the daylight gambler and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady's window.
Honore de Balzac