"Memories beautify life, but the capacity to..." - Quote by Honore De Balzac

“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.”

“An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.”

“A mother who is really a mother is never free.”

“Her nakedness was not absolute, for like Manet's _Olympia__, behind her ear she had a poisonous flower with orange petals, and she also wore a gold bangle on her right wrist and a necklace of tiny pearls. I imagined I would never see anything more exciting for as long as I lived, and today I can confirm that I was right.”

“Am I aging? The pros and the cons? Well, you know a lot more, at least until the time you start forgetting it all. Actually, aging can be a fun process, to some degree.”

“Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water.”

“Life is a search after power.”

“And a man's life's no more than to say "One."”

“If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure, that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.”