Honoré de Balzac Quotes

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

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

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.

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

Lovers have a way of using this word, nothing, which implies exactly the opposite.

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

Unintelligent persons are like weeds that thrive in good ground; they love to be amused in proportion to the degree in which they weary themselves.

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

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

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.

Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute.

Thought is a key to all treasures; the miser's gains are ours without his cares. Thus I have soared above this world, where my enjoyment have been intellectual joys.

Behind every fortune there is a crime.

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

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

At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist; there can only be promise of the coming woman.

Modesty is the conscience of the body.

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.

Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.

Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.

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.

Study lends a kind of enchantment to all our surroundings.

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.

If those who are the enemies of innocent amusements had the direction of the world, they would take away the spring, and youth, the former from the year, the latter from human life.

The man as he converses is the lover; silent, he is the husband.

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

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

To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.

Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.

Temperament is the thermometer of character.

The man whose action habitually bears the stamp of his mind is a genius, but the greatest genius is not always equal to himself, or he would cease to be human.

The country is provincial; it becomes ridiculous when it tries to ape Paris.

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

Great minds always tend to see virtue in misfortune.

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

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

Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.

Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.

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

Conscience is our unerring judge until we finally stifle it.

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

Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without esteem they cannot exist; esteem is the first demand that they make of love.

Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane.

There are some women whose pregnancy would make some sly bachelor smile.

The fact is that love is of two kinds, one which commands, and one which obeys. The two are quite distinct, and the passion to which the one gives rise is not the passion of the other.

The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.

It would be curious to know what leads a man to become a stationer rather than a baker, when he is no longer compelled, as among the Egyptians, to succeed to his father's craft.

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.

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

We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.

Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.

Reading brings us unknown friends

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

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

Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society.

The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.

The life of a man who deliberately runs through his fortune often becomes a business speculation; his friends, his pleasures, patrons, and acquaintances are his capital.

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