Honore De Balzac Quotes
Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.
In intimate family life, there comes a moment when children, willingly or no, become the judges of their parents.
Possibly the words materialism and spirituality express two sides of one and the same fact.
By dint of making sacrifices, a man grows interested in the person who exacts them. Great ladies, like courtesans, know this truth by instinct.
Poverty is a divine stepmother who does for youths what their own mothers were unable to do. It introduces them to frugality, to the world and to life.
As a rule, only the poor are generous. Rich people can always find excellent reasons for not handing over twenty thousand francs to a relative.
Paris, like every pretty woman, is subject to inexplicable whims of beauty and ugliness.
We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.
Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.
Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.
To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure.
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.
When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great, they will fall upon the rich.
Noble passions are like vices: the more they are satisfied, the greater they grow, Mothers and gamblers are insatiable.
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.
Authentic love always assumes the mystery of modesty, even in its expression, because actions speak louder than words. Unlike a feigned love, it feels no need to set a conflagration.
Love is the reduction of the universe to the single being, and the expansion of a single being, even to God
But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.
It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.
Imaginative, sanguine men will never recognize that in negotiations the most dangerous moment of all is when everything is moving according to their wishes.
Women, when they have made a sheep of a man, always tell him that he is a lion with a will of iron.
He has great tranquility of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men.
Gentleness in the gait is what simplicity is in the dress. Violent gestures or quick movements inspire involuntary disrespect.
Gratitude is a fool's word; we find it in the dictionary, but it is not in the heart of man.
Coffee falls into the stomach... ideas begin to move, things remembered arrive at full gallop... the shafts of wit start up like sharp-shooters, similes arise, the paper is covered with ink...
The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed.
We must certainly acknowledge that solitude is a fine thing; but it is a pleasure to have some one who can answer, and to whom we can say, from time to time, that solitude is a fine thing.
Happiness lends poetic charms to woman, and dress adorns her like a delicate tinge of rouge.
