If you are to judge a man, you must know his secret thoughts, sorrows, and feelings; to know merely the outward events of a man's life would only serve to make a chronological table-a fool's notion of history.
Honore de BalzacGentleness in the gait is what simplicity is in the dress. Violent gestures or quick movements inspire involuntary disrespect.
Honore de BalzacAmbitious men spend their youth in rendering themselves worthy of patronage; it is their great mistake. While the foolish creatures are laying in stores of knowledge and energy, so that they shall not sink under the weight of responsible posts that recede from them, schemers come and go who are wealthy in words and destitute of ideas, astonish the ignorant, and creep into the confidence of those who have a little knowledge.
Honore de BalzacThe secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.
Honore de BalzacEmulation admires and strives to imitate great actions; envy is only moved to malice.
Honore de BalzacBankers are lynxes. To expect any gratitude from them is equivalent to attempting to move the wolves of the Ukraine to pity in the middle of winter.
Honore de BalzacAh! how much a mother learns from her child! The constant protection of a helpless being forces us to so strict an alliance with virtue, that a woman never shows to full advantage except as a mother. Then alone can her character expand in the fulfillment of all life's duties and the enjoyment of all its pleasures.
Honore de BalzacA 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 BalzacThe happier a man, the more apt he is to tremble. In hearts exclusively tender, anxiety and jealousy are in exact proportion to happiness.
Honore de BalzacSqueeze marriage as much as you like, you will never extract anything from it but fun for bachelors and boredom for husbands.
Honore de BalzacIf the human heart sometimes finds moments of pause as it ascends the slopes of affection, it rarely halts on the way down.
Honore de BalzacEverything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination's orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink - for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder.
Honore de BalzacLove is like some fresh spring, first a stream and then a river, changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation.
Honore de BalzacNo society is complete without some victim, a creature to pity, to jeer at, to scorn or to protect.
Honore de BalzacThose sweetly smiling angels with pensive looks, innocent faces, and cash-boxes for hearts.
Honore de BalzacPower is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.
Honore de BalzacLove has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.
Honore de BalzacThere are moments in life when all we can bear is the sense that our friend is near us; our wounds would wince at the touch of consoling words, that would reveal the depths of our pain.
Honore de BalzacHe's got his dog trained so that it only does it on newspapers. The trouble is it does it when he's reading the blasted things.
Honore de BalzacKindness steers no easy course. Attributing it to character, we seldom recognize the secret efforts of a noble heart, whereas we reward really wicked people for the evil they refrain from committing.
Honore de BalzacDoes not any limit imposed upon one inspire a desire to go beyond it? Does not our keenest suffering arise when our free will is crossed?
Honore de BalzacThought is the only treasure that God sets outside all power and keeps to serve as a secret link among the unhappy.
Honore de BalzacA lover always thinks of his mistress first and himself second; with a husband it runs the other way.
Honore de BalzacIn love, what a woman mistakes for disgust is actually clearsightedness. If she does not admire a man, she scorns him.
Honore de BalzacThe fact is that love is of two kinds, one which commands, and one which obeys. The two are quite distinct, and the passion to which the one gives rise is not the passion of the other.
Honore de BalzacOur most bitter enemies are our own kith and kin. Kings have no brothers, no sons, no mother!
Honore de BalzacThinking is seeing.... Every human science is based on deduction, which is a slow process of seeing by which we work up from the effect to the cause; or, in a wider sense, all poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things.
Honore de Balzac