Honoré de Balzac Quotes

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

“Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.”

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

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

“The more one judges, the less one loves.”

“What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended?”

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

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

“Those who spend too fast never grow rich.”

“Towns find it as hard as houses of business to rise again from ruin.”

“To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure.”

“Ideas devour the ages as men are devoured by their passions. When man is cured, human nature will cure itself perhaps.”

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

“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.”

“Life cannot go on without much forgetting.”

“A grocer is attracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the repulsion which renders it odious to artists.”

“When law becomes despotic, morals are relaxed, and vice versa.”

“Where poverty ceases, avarice begins.”

“What is art? Nature concentrated.”

“All human power is a compound of time and patience.”

“Finance, like time, devours its own children.”

“Talent is a flame, but genius is a fire.”

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

“It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment.”

“Every moment of happiness requires a great amount of Ignorance”