Honoré de Balzac Quotes

“If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.”

“Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity.”

“Political liberty, the peace of a nation, and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a heavy tax in blood!”

“Love is a game in which one always cheats.”

“Women, when they have made a sheep of a man, always tell him that he is a lion with a will of iron.”

“Nobody loves a woman because she is handsome or ugly, stupid or intelligent. We love because we love.”

“The duration of passion is proportionate with the original resistance of the woman.”

“But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.”

“Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.”

“A flow of words is a sure sign of duplicity.”

“Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.”

“Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.”

“A man is a poor creature compared to a woman.”

“True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.”

“Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.”

“A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over.”

“Forgetting is the great secret of strong and creative lives.”

“There is no such thing as a great talent without great will power.”

“Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.”

“A lover teaches a wife all her husband has kept from her.”

“Between the daylight gambler and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady's window.”

“Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.”

“No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.”

“When you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt.”

“The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.”