Honore De Balzac Quotes

But does not happiness come from the soul within?

For certain people, misfortune is a beacon that lights up the dark and baser sides of social life.

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

Today nobility is gone: there is only a peerage.

All poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things.

Though your vulgarian does not readily admit that feelings can change overnight, certainly two lovers often part far more abruptly than they came together.

When she lives at his palace, the maiden niece of a bishop can pass for a respectable woman because, if she has a love affair, she is obliged to hoodwink her uncle.

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!

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.

Let us leave the cure of public evils to those quacks, the statesmen.

Pure herring oil is the port wine of English cats

They [twin beds] are the most stupid, the most perfidious, and the most dangerous invention in the world. Shame and a curse on who thought of them.

Love may be the fairest gem which Society has filched from Nature; but what is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood? A smile has dried my tears.

Good befalls us while we sleep, sometimes.

Most women wish to feel that their spirit has been violated. Do they not, indeed, flatter themselves on never yielding save to force?

A husband can commit no greater blunder than to discuss his wife, if she is virtuous, with his mistress; unless it be to mention his mistress, if she is beautiful, to his wife.

Man's condition is horrible because, no matter what form his happiness may take, it arises from some species of ignorance.

Un mari, comme un gouvernement, ne doit jamais avouer de faute. A husband, like a government, never needs to admit a fault.

Priests, magistrates and ladies never quite take off their gowns.

Marriage is an institution necessary to the maintenance of society but contrary to the laws of nature.

Conscience is a cudgel which all men pick up in order to thwack their neighbors instead of applying it to their own shoulders.

All we are is in the soul.

Nature endows woman alternately with a particular strength which helps her to suffer and a weakness which counsels her to be resigned.

My writing table has seen all my wretchedness, knows all my plans, has overheard all my thoughts.

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

The Parisan, sauntering the streets idly, is as often a man in despair as a lounger.

Among fifty percent of your married couples, the husband worries very little about what his wife is doing, provided she is doing all he wishes.

In painting, you can suddenly come upon something so huge that no-one can deal with it.

Sects differ more in name than tenets.

The endless legacy of the past to the present is the secret source of human genius.

Economized love is never real love.

Necessity is the spur of genius.

Imagination helps the realism of every detail, and only sees the beauties of the work.

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

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

The passion of love is essentially selfish, while motherhood widens the circle of our feelings.

Women, perhaps even require a little hypocrisy.

Marriageable girls as well as mothers understand the terms and perils of the lottery called wedlock. That is why women weep at a wedding and men smile.

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

Woman is stronger by virtue of her feelings than man by virtue of his power.

Women are as they are; they necessarily have the defects of their virtues.

One of the most detestable habits of Lilliputian minds is to find their own littleness in others.

Conventions are often more cruel than the law.

If we study Nature attentively in its great evolutions as in its minutest works, we cannot fail to recognize the possibility of enchantment - giving to that word its exact significance.

Charity is not one of the virtues practiced on the stock market. The heart of a bank is but one of many viscera.

La femme marie e est un esclave qu'il faut savoir mettre sur un tro" n e. A married woman is a slave whom one must put on a throne.

The happier a man, the more apt he is to tremble. In hearts exclusively tender, anxiety and jealousy are in exact proportion to happiness.

A knowledge of mankind and of things that surround us gives us that second education which proves far move valuable than our first because it alone turns out a truly accomplished man.

In the medical profession a horse and carriage are more necessary than any scientific knowledge.

A woman in love has full intelligence of her power; the more virtuous she is, the more effective her coquetry.