Honore De Balzac Quotes
Misfortune makes of certain souls a vast desert through which rings the voice of God.
A woman's sentimental monkeyshines will always deceive her lover, who invariably waxes ecstatic where her husband necessarily shrugs his shoulders.
Love passes quickly, and passes like a street Arab, anxious to mark his way with mischief.
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.
When a woman wants to betray her husband, her actions are almost invariably studied but they are never reasoned.
Friendships last when each friend thinks he has a slight superiority over the other.
With every one, the expectation of a misfortune constitutes a dreadful, punishment. Suffering then assumes the proportions of the unknown, which is the soul's infinite.
Clothes are like a gloss that sets off everything; dresser were invented more to enhance physical advantages than to veil physical defects.
Innocence alone dares commit certain acts of audacity. Virtue, when tutored, is as calculating as vice.
When will conventional good manners become attractive? When will ladies of fashion exhibit their shoulders a little less and their affability and wit a little more?
Yes, I can understand that a man might go to a gambling table when he sees that all that lies between him and death is his last crown.
Discouragement is of all ages: In youth it is a presentiment, in old age a remembrance.
If certain women walk straight into adultery, there are many others who cling to numerous hopes, and commit sin only after wandering through a maze of sorrows.
The errors of women spring, almost always, from their faith in the good, or their confidence in the true
Handsome widows, after a twelve-month, enjoy a latitude and longitude without limit.
Genuine sorrows are very tranquil in appearance in the deep bed they have dug for themselves. But, seeming to slumber, they corrode the soul like that frightful acid which penetrates crystal.
Love and work have the virtues of making a man pretty indifferent to anything else.
Emulation admires and strives to imitate great actions; envy is only moved to malice.
A careful observation of Nature will disclose pleasantries of superb irony. She has for instance placed toads close to flowers.
During the great storms of our lives we imitate those captains who jettison their weightiest cargo.
A mother's life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears.
As soon as man seeks to penetrate the secrets of Nature--in which nothing is secret and it is but a question of seeing--he realizes that the simple produces the supernatural.
Generally our confidences move downward rather than upward; in our secret affairs, we employ our inferiors much more than our bettors.
Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true.
The questioning spirit is the rebellious spirit. A rebellion is always either a cloak to hide a prince, or the swaddling wrapper of a new rule.
Your modest savant smiles as he says to his admirers: What have I done? Nothing. Man does not invent a force, he directs it.
A husband and wife who have separate bedrooms have either drifted apart or found happiness.
Everybody all over the world takes a wife's estimate into account in forming an opinion of a man.
People exaggerate both happiness and unhappiness; we are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people say we are.
Foppery, being the chronic condition of women, is not so much noticed as it is when it breaks out on the person of the male bird.
The woman you buy takes a great deal of money. The woman who gives herself to you takes all your money.
