Honoré de Balzac Quotes

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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.

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
Give to a wounded heart seclusion; consolation nor reason ever effected anything in such a case.

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

Honoré de Balzac
Man is imperfect. He is at some times more or less hypocritical than at others, and then simpletons say that his morality is high or low.

Honoré de Balzac
Women are demons that make us enter hell through the door of paradise.

Honoré de Balzac
The world ceases to be a pleasure when it ceases to be a speculation.

Honoré de Balzac
Misfortune makes of certain souls a vast desert through which rings the voice of God.

Honoré de Balzac
A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over.

Honoré de Balzac
There is something great and terrible about suicide.

Honoré de Balzac
Marriage often unites for life two people who scarcely know each other.

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

Honoré de Balzac
It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day, than to say bright things from time to time.

Honoré de Balzac
The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed.

Honoré de Balzac
The winter's frost must rend the burr of the nut before the fruit is seen. So adversity tempers the human heart, to discover its real worth.

Honoré de Balzac
We are finite beings: there can be no infinite happiness for us. The soul that dreams it and pursues it will embrace but a shadow.

Honoré de Balzac
The provinces are provinces; they are only ridiculous when they mimic Paris.

Honoré de Balzac
How can we explain the perpetuity of envy — a vice which yields no return?

Honoré de Balzac
A woman who is guided by the head, and not by the heart, is a social pestilence: she has all the defects of the passionate and affectionate woman, with none of her compensations; she is without pity, without love, without virtue, without sex.

Honoré de Balzac
In this advanced century, a girl of sixteen knows as much as her mother, and enjoys her knowledge much more.

Honoré de Balzac
The habits of life form the soul, and the soul forms the countenance.

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
It is no sin to be tempted; the wickedness lies in being overcome.

Honoré de Balzac
What saves the virtue of many a woman is that protecting god, the impossible.

Honoré de Balzac
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.

Honoré de Balzac
In love, a woman is like a lyre that surrenders its secrets only to the hand that knows how to touch its strings.

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

Honoré 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.

Honoré de Balzac
We have long struggles with ourself, of which the outcome is one of our actions; they are, as it were, the inner side of human nature. This inner side is God's; the outer side belongs to men.

Honoré de Balzac
If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye!

Honoré de Balzac