Honore de Balzac Quotes

A monster which devours everything - that is familiarity.

Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt.

To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.

Nothing is as heady as the wine of misfortune.

There are words which cut like steel.

Conscience is a cudgel which all men pick up in order to thwack their neighbors instead of applying it to their own shoulders.

The greater a man's talents, the more marked his idiosyncracies. Yet in the provinces originality is considered perilously close to lunacy.

The key to all sciences is unquestionably the question mark. To the word How? we owe most of our greatest discoveries. Wisdom in life may perhaps consist in asking ourselves on all occasions: Why?

Economized love is never real love.

When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great, they will fall upon the rich.

All human power is a compound of time and patience.

Admiration bestowed upon any one but ourselves is always tedious.

Rich women need not fear old age; their gold can always create about them any feelings necessary to their happiness.

For certain people, misfortune is a beacon that lights up the dark and baser sides of social life.

What moralist can deny that well-bred and vicious people are much more agreeable than their virtuous counterparts? Having crimes to atone for, they provisionally solicit indulgence by showing leniency toward the defects of their judges. Thus they pass for excellent folk.

A woman in the depths of despair proves so persuasive that she wrenches the forgiveness lurking deep in the heart of her lover. This is all the more true when that woman is young, pretty, and so decollete as to emerge from the neck of her gown in the costume of Eve.

Loyalty in time of need is possibly one of the noblest of victories a courtier can win over himself.

Events are never absolute, their outcome depends entirely upon the individual.

All human beings go through a previous life... Who knows how many fleshly forms the heir of heaven occupies before he can be brought to understand the value of that silence and solitude of spiritual worlds?

When in Turkey, do as the turkeys do.

One hour of love has a whole life in it.

You cannot pluck love out of your heart as you would pull a tooth.

Woman has this in common with angels, that suffering beings belong especially to her.

A man is a poor creature compared to a woman.

Every moment of happiness requires a great amount of Ignorance

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

Let nothing dupe you! Such is the horrible maxim that acts as a solvent upon every noble feeling man experiences.

Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself.

No woman allows her lover to descend from his pedestal. Even a god is not forgiven the slightest pettiness.

To have fame follow us is well, but it is not a desirable avant-courier.

There is neither vice nor virtue, there are only circumstances.

A country is strong which consists of wealthy families, every member of whom is interested in defending a common treasure; it is weak when composed of scattered individuals, to whom it matters little whether they obey seven or one, a Russian or a Corsican, so long as each keeps his own plot of land, blind in their wretched egotism, to the fact that the day is coming when this too will be torn from them.

Nothing is unimportant to a man plunged in despair. He is as credulous as a criminal sentenced to death who listens to a lunatic raving to him about how he can escape through the keyhole.

How fondly swindlers coddle their dupes! No mother is as caressing or thoughtful towards her adored child as a merchant in hypocrisy toward his milch-cow.

True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure.

Journalists grow accustomed to seeing evil and they let it pass; they proceed to approve it, and they end by committing it themselves.