Honoré de Balzac Quotes

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

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

Honoré de Balzac
When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even for our virtues.

Honoré de Balzac
Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.

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

Honoré de Balzac
A lover has all the virtues and all the defects that a husband has not.

Honoré de Balzac
In music, instruments perform the functions of the colors employed in painting.

Honoré de Balzac
The endless legacy of the past to the present is the secret source of human genius.

Honoré de Balzac
It is easier for a woman to be a good wife than a good mother. A widow has two duties with contrary obligations: she is a mother and she must exercise paternal authority. Few woman are strong enough to understand and to play this role.

Honoré de Balzac
Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings. Virtue in Provence, in Constantinople, in London, and in Paris bears very different fruit, but is none the less virtue.

Honoré de Balzac
When two beings are united by love, all social conventionalities are suspended.

Honoré de Balzac
Too great a display of delicacy can and does sometimes infringe upon decency.

Honoré de Balzac
Tone is light in another shape. In music, instruments perform the functions of the colours employed in painting.

Honoré de Balzac
Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true.

Honoré de Balzac
A man must be a fool, who does not succeed in making a woman believe that which flatters her.

Honoré de Balzac
He drew out the most delicious thin watch that Breguet had ever made. 'Fancy, it is eleven o'clock, I was up early'.

Honoré de Balzac
Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness.

Honoré de Balzac
Weak souls are capable of only weak sentiments; strong souls of powerful sentiments.

Honoré de Balzac
When all that is fond in our nature is most thoroughly awakened, when we feel most deeply and tenderly — even then, love is so conscious of its instability that we are irresistibly prompted to ask: Do you love me? Will you love me always?

Honoré de Balzac
A weapon is anything that can serve to wound; and sentiments are perhaps the most cruel weapons man can employ to wound his fellow man.

Honoré de Balzac
A husband who submits to his wife's yoke is justly held an object of ridicule. A woman's influence ought to be entirely concealed.

Honoré de Balzac
If we study Nature attentively in its great evolutions as in its minutest works, we cannot fail to recognize the possibility of enchantment — giving to that word its exact significance. Man does not create forces; he employs the only force that exists and which includes all others, namely Motion, the breath incomprehensible of the sovereign Maker of the universe.

Honoré de Balzac
Marriage must constantly fight against a monster which devours everything: routine.

Honoré de Balzac
If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.

Honoré de Balzac
The errors of women spring, almost always, from their faith in the good, or their confidence in the true.

Honoré de Balzac