Honore de Balzac Quotes

A mother who is really a mother is never free.

A vocation is born to us all; happily most of us meet promptly our twin,--occupation.

The greatest joy a petty soul can taste is to dupe a great soul and catch it in a snare.

He hesitated till the last moment, but finally dropped them in the box, saying, "I shall win!"--the cry of a gambler, the cry of the great general, the compulsive cry that has ruined more men than it has ever saved.

Glory is the sunshine of the dead

When there is an old maid in the house, a watchdog is unnecessary.

A woman's greatest charm consists in a constant appeal to a man's generosity by a gracious declaration of helplessness which fills him with pride and awakens the most magnificent feelings in his heart.

The man whom fate employs to awaken love in the heart of a young girl is often unaware of his work and therefore leaves it uncompleted.

Our souls possess the unknown power of extending as well as contracting space.

We do not wish success yet we obtain it. Always we find what we are not looking for. These words are too true not to become a proverb some day.

Religious ecstasy is a madness of thought freed of its bodily bonds, whereas in the ecstasy of love, the forces of twin natures unite, blend and embrace one another.

The human heart may find here and there a resting-place short of the highest height of affection, but we seldom stop in the steep, downward slope of hatred.

Modern reformers offer nebulous theories or write philanthropic novels. But your thief acts! He is as clear as a fact and as logical as a punch on the nose! And what a style he has!

Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity.

Isn't it really quite extraordinary to see that, since man took his first step, no one has asked himself why he walks, how he walks, if he has ever walked, if he could walk better, what he achieves in walking .. questions that are tied to all the philosophical, psychological, and political systems which preoccupy the world.

To feel, to love, to suffer, to devote herself, will always be the text of the life of woman.

Imaginative, sanguine men will never recognize that in negotiations the most dangerous moment of all is when everything is moving according to their wishes.

Above all do not ask that justice be just: It is just, because it is justice. The idea of a just justice could have originated only in the brain of an anarchist.

Many people claim coffee inspires them, but, as everybody knows, coffee only makes boring people even more boring.

A man wastes his time going to hear some of our eloquent modern preachers; they may change his opinions, but never his conduct.

If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.

The Police and the Society of Jesus posses in common the virtue of never forsaking their enemies as friends.

No woman has ever existed who did not know perfectly well in her heart what to expect from the superiority or inferiority of a rival.

The mind, too, has its regimen. It needs gymnastics, just like the body does.

When an intelligent man reaches the point of inviting self-explanation and offers surrendering the key to his heart, he is assuredly riding a drunken horse.

It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.

On the moral plane, true friends enjoy the same protection as the sense of smell confers upon dogs. They scent the sorrow of their friends, they divine its causes, and they clasp it to their minds and hearts.

All we are is in the soul.

There are no principles; there are only events. There is no good and bad, there are only circumstances.

Law is a silvery web that lets the big flies pass and catches all the small ones.

Any man, however blase or depraved, finds his love kindled anew when he sees himself threatened by a rival.

Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.

Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.

We are scarcely apt to berate the source of enjoyment.

Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love.

What makes friendship indissolute and what doubles its charms is a feeling we find lacking in love: I mean certitude.

For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.

Six weeks with a fever is an eternity.

The man as he converses is the lover; silent, he is the husband.

The man who enters his wife's dressing room is either a philosopher or a fool.

There is no such thing as a great talent without great will power.

Novelty is both delightful and deceptive.

Alas, two men are often necessary to provide a woman with a perfect lover, just as in literature a writer composes a type only by employing the singularities of several similar characters.

Suffering predisposes the mind to devoutness; and most young girls, prompted by instinctive tenderness, lean towards mysticism, the obscurer side of religion.

The day will dawn when Europe will believe only in the man who tramples her underfoot.

To lese-majeste and contempt of court, we must add the crime of lese-million, that fearful indignity we visit on the rich when we expose the impotence of gold.

In family life people almost always adjust themselves to misfortune. They make a bed of it and hope makes them accept that bed, however hard it is.

A sacrament by virtue of which each imparts nothing but vexations to the other.