Honore de Balzac Quotes

In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.

Vivacity is the health of the spirit.

Between 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.

If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.

Among fifty percent of your married couples, the husband worries very little about what his wife is doing, provided she is doing all he wishes.

Inspiration is the opportunity of genius.

Let us leave the cure of public evils to those quacks, the statesmen.

A girl fresh from a boarding school may perhaps be a virgin but no! she is never chaste.

In intimate family life, there comes a moment when children, willingly or no, become the judges of their parents.

The greatest tyranny is to love I where we are not loved again.

Envy lurks at the bottom of the human heart like a viper in its hole.

There are some women whose pregnancy would make some sly bachelor smile.

The man whose action habitually bears the stamp of his mind is a genius, but the greatest genius is not always equal to himself, or he would cease to be human.

A husband who submits to his wife's yoke is justly held an object of ridicule. A woman's influence ought to be entirely concealed.

Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.

Woman is stronger by virtue of her feelings than man by virtue of his power.

It is easy to sit up and take notice, What is difficult is getting up and taking action.

Unintelligent persons are like weeds that thrive in good ground; they love to be amused in proportion to the degree in which they weary themselves.

If we all said to people's faces what we say behind one another's backs, society would be impossible.

Reproach is usually honest, which is more than can be said of praise.

Only when one has learned to acknowledge that wiser minds have made better words to come out of our mouths may we truly, then, begin to speak them.

Women? In order to realize how far these charming creatures we idealize can carry their cruelty, we must see them among themselves!

The love of nature is the only love that does not deceive human hopes.

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.

Nothing is so discreet as a young face, for nothing is less mobile; it has the serenity, the surface smoothness, and the freshnessof a lake. There is no character in women's faces before the age of thirty.

Women are always true, even in the midst of their greatest falsities, because they are always influenced by some natural feeling.

True lovers know how trifling a thing is money yet how difficult to blend with love!

No hawk swooping down upon his prey, no stag improvising new detours by which to trick the huntsman, no dog scenting game from afar is comparable in speed to the celerity of a salesman when he gets wind a deal, to his skill in tripping up or forestalling a rival, and to the art with which he sniffs out and discovers a possible sale.

How sternly we reproach virtue for its failings, how indulgent we are to the better qualities of vice!

A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over.

To speak of love is to make love.

Our most natural feelings are those we are loath to confess, and fatuity is among them.

Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.

From the manner in which a woman draws her thread at every stitch of her needlework, any other woman can surmise her thoughts.

A man who stops at nothing short of the law is very clever indeed!

Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer – Death has never forsaken any man

We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.

A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.

Possibly the words materialism and spirituality express two sides of one and the same fact.

Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.

Woman is closer to angels than man because she knows how to mingle an infinite tenderness with the most absolute compassion.

True love rules especially through memory.

This surface good-nature which captivates a new acquaintance and is no bar to treachery, which knows no scruple and is never at fault for an excuse, which makes an outcry at the wound which it condones, is one of the most distinctive features of the journalist. This camaraderie (the word is a stroke of genius) corrodes the noblest minds; it eats into their pride like rust, kills the germ of great deeds, and lends a sanction to moral cowardice.

Virtue is always too much of a piece and too ignorant of those shades of feeling and of temperament that enable us to squint when we are placed in a false position.

Coffee falls into the stomach... ideas begin to move, things remembered arrive at full gallop... the shafts of wit start up like sharp-shooters, similes arise, the paper is covered with ink...

For young people always begin by loving exaggeration, that infirmity of noble minds.

Women are as they are; they necessarily have the defects of their virtues.

The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.