Honore de balzac quotes

He has great tranquility of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men.

The victory always has a lot of parents but the defeat is always an orphan.

Our most bitter enemies are our own kith and kin. Kings have no brothers, no sons, no mother!

One hour of love has a whole life in it.

It is quite right what they say: the three most beautiful sights in the world are a ship in full sail, a galloping horse, and a woman dancing.

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

Can you find a man who loves the occupation that provides him with a livelihood? Professions are like marriages; we end by feeling only their inconveniences.

The good we do to others is spoilt unless we efface ourselves so completely that those we help have no sense of inferiority.

Talent is a flame, but genius is a fire.

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

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

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

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

Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.

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

The woman you buy takes a great deal of money. The woman who gives herself to you takes all your money.

There are two histories : official history, lying, and then secret history, where you find the real causes of events.

A husband who submits to his wife's yoke is justly held an object of ridicule. A woman's influence ought to be entirely concealed.

When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues.

Man is neither good nor bad; he is born with instincts and abilities.

A lover teaches a wife all her husband has kept from her.

Temperament is the thermometer of character.

Life cannot go on without much forgetting.

Reading brings us unknown friends

Behind every fortune there is a crime.

Poetry is only born after painful journeys into the vast regions of thought.

Fools gain greater advantages through their weakness than intelligent men through their strength. We watch a great man struggling against fate and we do not lift a finger to help him. But we patronize a grocer who is headed for bankruptcy.

Among even the happiest married couples there are always moments of regret.

I can no longer think of anything but you. In spite of myself, my imagination carries me to you. I grasp you, I kiss you, I caress you, a thousand of the most amorous caresses take possession of me.

Those who spend too fast never grow rich.

True lovers know how trifling a thing is money yet how difficult to blend with love!

Pity is woman's sweetest charm.

Where poverty ceases, avarice begins.

The first thing necessary to win the heart of a woman is opportunity.

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

I believe in the incomprehensibility of God.

Genius is answerable only to itself; it is the sole judge of the means, since it alone knows the end; thus genius must consider itself as above the law, for it is the task of genius to remake the law; moreover the man who frees himself from his time and place may take everything, hazard everything, for everything is his by right.

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

As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move…similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle.

God reveals Himself, unfailingly, to the solitary, thoughtful seeker

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

The privilege of feeling at home everywhere belongs only to kings, wolves and robbers.

Six weeks with a fever is an eternity.

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

No man has ever yet discovered the way to give friendly advice to any woman, not even to his own wife.

Men are so made that they can resist sound argument, and yet yield to a glance.

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

It is easy to sit up and take notice, What is difficult is getting up and taking action.

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

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Sometimes, one gesture comprises an entire drama, the accent of one word ruins an entire existence, and the indifference of one glance kills the happiest passion.

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

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

Life is simply what out feelings do to us.

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.

Our greatest fears lie in anticipation.

It is as absurd to say that a man can't love one woman all the time as it is to say that a violinist needs several violins to play the same piece of music.

In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.

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

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

Novelty is both delightful and deceptive.

God is the poet; men are but the actors. The great dramas of earth were written in heaven.

Cruelty and fear shake hands together.

True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.

It is beyond a doubt that during the sixteenth century, and the years immediately preceding and following it, poisoning had been brought to a pitch of perfection which remains unknown to modern chemistry, but which is indisputably proved by history. Italy, the cradle of modern science, was at that time, the inventor and mistress of these secrets, many of which are lost.

An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.

People who are in love suspect nothing or everything.

I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race.

Women are happy to possess a man whom all women covet.

Memories beautify life, but the capacity to forget makes it bearable.

As a rule, only the poor are generous.

Love is the poetry of the senses.

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

When we drink coffee, ideas march in like the army

The press is like a woman: sublime when it lies, it will not let go until it has forced you to believe it. The public, like a foolish husband, always succumbs.

All human power is a compound of time and patience.

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

First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint the second time.

Want him to be more of a man? Try being more of a woman!

If we all said to people's faces what we say behind one another's backs, society would be impossible.

Liberty begets anarchy, anarchy leads to despotism, and despotism brings about liberty once again. Millions of human beings have perished without being able to make any of these systems triumph.

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.

Great minds always tend to see virtue in misfortune.

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

All happiness depends on courage and work. I have had many periods of wretchedness, but with energy and above all with illusions, I pulled through them all.

The more you judge, the less you love.

A husband and wife who have separate bedrooms have either drifted apart or found happiness.

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

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.

The national budget is not a safe-deposit box. It is a spray can.

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

There are words which cut like steel.

Forgetting is the great secret of strong and creative lives.

Love or hatred must constantly increase between two persons who are always together; every moment fresh reasons are found for loving or hating better.

How can we explain the perpetuity of envy--a vice which yields no return?

A man who stops at nothing short of the law is very clever indeed!

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.

No navigator has yet traced lines of latitude and longitude on the conjugal sea.

A lover always thinks of his mistress first and himself second; with a husband it runs the other way.

Every moment of happiness requires a great amount of Ignorance

We cannot confront solitude without moral resources.

Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane.

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

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

White hair often covers the head, but the heart that holds it is ever young.

An ounce of courage will go farther with women than a pound of timidity.

The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.

A jealous husband doesnt doubt his wife, but himself.

Women, when they have made a sheep of a man, always tell him that he is a lion with a will of iron.

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

The more one judges, the less one loves.

When you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt.

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.

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

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

How natural it is to destroy what we cannot possess, to deny what we do not understand, and to insult what we envy!

Woman is closer to angels than man because she knows how to mingle an infinite tenderness with the most absolute compassion.

Everything 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.

Events are never absolute, their outcome depends entirely upon the individual. Misfortune is a stepping stone for a genius, a piscina for a Christian, a treasure for a man of parts, and an abyss for a weakling.

Death unites as well as separates; it silences all paltry feeling.

To be happy, a man must love his wife as she chooses to be loved.

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

People exaggerate both happiness and unhappiness; we are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people say we are.

He who best knows the world will love it least.

To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals - that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.