Honoré de Balzac Quotes

A mother who is really a mother is never free.

Modesty is the conscience of the body.

Doing his utmost, deploying all his energy, a young man setting out from zero can wind up after ten ...

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

We are never either so wretched or so happy as we say we are.

Necessity is often the spur to genius.

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

Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.

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

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

The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they ...

Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.

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

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

The fact is that love is of two kinds, one which commands, and one which obeys. The two are quite di...

Believe everything you hear said of the world nothing is too impossibly bad.

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

Hope is a light diet but very stimulating.

He looked like some plant bleached by darkness.

Happy?" asked Aquilina, with dreadful look, and a smile full of pity and terror. "Ah, you do not kno...

Journalism, look you, is the religion of modern society.

Have you ever plunged into the immensity of space and time by reading the geological treatises of Cu...

No one was irritable; we have never known anyone to remain unhappy while digesting a good meal. We e...

Man cannot spend all his time doing evil, and even in the company of pirates there must be some swee...

Se ciascuno pensa solo a se stesso e non si fida che di se stesso, come volete che ci sia coraggio c...

In Paris, when certain people see you ready to set your foot in the stirrup, some pull your coat-tai...

Poverty has in its favour an exquisite sleep filled with beautiful dreams.

So, my dear fellow, if I don't believe in God, I believe still less in man.

He became...the ideal of that virtue which delights in its own work...doing everything with simplici...

He hesitated till the last moment, but finally dropped them in the box, saying, "I shall win!"--the ...

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

How did you get back?' asked Vautrin. 'I walked,' replied Eugene.'I wouldn't like half-pleasures, my...

Here comes Mamma Vauquerr, fair as a starrr; and strung up like a bunch of carrots. Aren't we suffoc...

However gross a man may be, the minute he expresses a strong and genuine affection, some inner secre...

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

Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?

If the human heart sometimes finds moments of pause as it ascends the slopes of affection, it rarely...

Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether...

The human heart may find here and there a resting-place short of the highest height of affection, bu...

It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better,...

Women are always true, even in the midst of their greatest falsities, because they are always influe...

Where some one else's welfare is concerned, a young girl becomes as ingenious as a thief. Guileless ...

No one ought even to desert a woman after throwing her a heap of gold in her distress! He ought to l...

Ah! What pleasure it must be to a woman to suffer for the one she loves!

Some day you will find out that there is far more happiness in another's happiness than in your own.

Of necessity she went further in aversion than she had gone in love, for her hatred was not in propo...

The viscountess had raised the forefinger of her right hand and made a pretty gesture toward a stool...

A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of the speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the ...

Such is life. It is no cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to cook your...

We flew back home like swallows. 'Is it happiness that makes us so light?' Agathe asked.

What moralists describe as the mysteries of the human heart are solely the deceiving thoughts, the s...

Was she acting entirely consciously? No: women are always sincere, even in the midst of their most s...

Is there any instinct more deeply implanted in the heart of man than the pride of protection, a prot...

Though the human heart may have to pause for rest when climbing the heights of affection it rarely s...

A man like you is a god, not just a machine covered with skin, but a theater where fine feelings spr...

The more one judges, the less one loves.

For avarice begins where poverty ends.

-Хүү минь, чи надад ямар ч өргүй гэж бодож явах эрхийг би чамд олголоо.

Hortense was a wife; Valerie a mistress.Many men desire to have these two editions of the same work,...

If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself int...

Virtue will cut your head off, vice will only cut your hair.

Вера в себя способна творить такие же чудеса, как вера в Господа Бога.

Love is the poetry of the senses!

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

Man can start with aversion and end with love, but if he begins with love and comes round to aversio...

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

Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.

for a woman knows the face of the man she loves like a sailor knows the open sea

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

The more he saw, the more he doubted. He watched men narrowly, and saw how, beneath the surface, cou...

All happiness depends on courage and work.

Alas! Where love is concerned, self-interested deception is superior to the truth itself, which is w...

Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the o...

No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.

We estimate wrongdoing in proportion to the purity of our conscience

Glory is the sunshine of the dead

There are men who put the weight of a coffin into their deliberations as they bargain for Cashmere s...

Paris that eternal monstrous marvel … the city of a hundred-thousand novels … a living creature, the...

Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.

The word 'love,' used in connection with the reproduction of our species, is the most odious blasphe...

Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine.

Love is the most melodious of all harmonies and the sentiment of love is innate. Woman is a delightf...

The more a man judges, the less he loves

Marriage must fight constantly against a monster which devours everything: routine.

Reading brings us unknown friends

Lucien took the cigar and lit it, in the Spanish fashion, from that of the priest. "He is right," Lu...

Cruelty and fear shake hands together. An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire ...

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

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

There are moments in life when all that we can bear is the sense that our friend is near us our wou...

It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashio...

A woman must be a genius to create a good husband.

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

A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the ...

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

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

Nobody loves a woman because she is handsome or ugly, stupid or intelligent. We love because we love...

To provoke laughter without joining in it greatly heightens the effect.

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

True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demons...

All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.