Honore de Balzac Quotes

But does not happiness come from the soul within?

Doubt follows white-winged hope with trembling steps.

A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.

The more illegal a profit, the more tenaciously a man clings to it.

We do not attach ourselves lastingly to anything that has not cost us care, labor or longing.

Constancy will always be the genius of love, the indication of that strength which constitutes the poet. A man should possess all women in his wife, like those squalid poetasters of the seventeenth century who made fair Irises and dazzling Chloes of their lowly Manons.

A great love is a credit opened in favor of a power so consuming that the moment of bankruptcy must inevitably occur.

The election of a deputy to the Legislature offers a noble and majestic spectacle comparable only to the delivery of a child. It involves the same efforts, the same impurities, the same laceration, and the same triumph.

Poets 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.

We cannot confront solitude without moral resources.

The boor covers himself, the rich man or the fool adorns himself, and the elegant man gets dressed.

Love is not only a feeling, it is also an art. A simple word, a sensitive precaution, a mere nothing reveal to a woman the sublime artist who can touch her heart without withering it.

Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.

Our greatest fears lie in anticipation.

A naked woman is less dangerous than one who spreads her skirt skillfully to cover and exhibit everything at once.

I declare, on my soul and conscience, that the attainment of power, or of a great name in literature, seemed to me an easier victory than a success with some young, witty, and gracious lady of high degree.

People who are in love suspect nothing or everything.

Friendships last when each friend thinks he has a slight superiority over the other.

Virtue, perhaps, is nothing more than politeness of soul.

All men can bear a familiar, definite misfortune better than the cruel alternations of a fate which, from one moment to another, brings excessive joy or sorrow.

Noble hearts are neither jealous nor afraid because jealousy spells doubt and fear spells pettiness.

And he, like many jaded people, had few pleasures left in life save good food and drink.

The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.

To stroll is a science, it is the gastronomy of the eye. To walk is to vegetate, to stroll is to live.... To stroll is to enjoy, it is to assume a mind-set, it is to admire the sublime pictures of unhappiness, of love, of joy, of graceful or grotesque portraits; it is to plunge one's vision to the depths of a thousand existences: young, it is to desire everything; old, it is to live the life of the young, to marry their passions.

Self-interest is an ineffable feeling which shall follow us into God's very presence since they say there is a hierarchy even among the Holy Saints.

Modesty is the conscience of the body.

Sects differ more in name than tenets.

Tradesmen regard an author with a mixed feeling of terror, compassion and curiosity.

No woman dares to refuse love without a motive, for nothing is more natural than to yield to love.

When one has no particular talent for anything, one takes to the pen.

Old men are prone to invest the futures of young men with their own past sorrows.

Our happiness often depends upon social hypocrisies to which we will never stoop.

There are two kinds of poets: those who feel and those who express themselves. The former are happier.

Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.

Though the human heart may have to pause for rest when climbing the heights of affection it rarely stops on the slippery slope of hatred.

Sometimes at the best moments a single word or a look is enough.'

It is not hope but despair that gives us the measure of our ambitions. We may yield secretly to beautiful poems of hope but grief looms start and stripped of all veils.

One can imagine the look the two lovers exchanged; it was like a flame, for virtuous lovers have not a shred of hypocrisy.

If those who are the enemies of innocent amusements had the direction of the world, they would take away the spring, and youth, the former from the year, the latter from human life.

Hope is a memory that desires, the memory is a memory that has enjoyed.

A man's own vanity is a swindler that never lacks for a dupe.

Everybody all over the world takes a wife's estimate into account in forming an opinion of a man.

People who climb from one rung of society to another can never do anything simply.

In all lands, sailors form a race apart. They profess a congenital contempt for landlubbers. As for the tradesman, he understands nothing of sailors nor cares a fig about them. He is content to rob them if he can.

Journalism is a giant catapult set in motion by pigmy hatreds.

Many men nourish a pride which urges them to conceal their struggles and show themselves only as conquerors.

Love is the only passion which suffers neither past nor future.

Do you know what is the hardest thing in life? To make a choice.