Quotes By Honore De Balzac

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

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.

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.

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

Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society?

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

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.

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

Modesty is the conscience of the body.

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.

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

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

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.

Love is the poetry of the senses.

One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.

The most virtuous women have something within them, something that is never chaste.

What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended?

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.

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.

Study lends a kind of enchantment to all our surroundings.

Love is a game in which one always cheats.

To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure.

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

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

Virtue, perhaps, is nothing more than politeness of soul.

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

Love or hatred must constantly increase between two persons who are always together; every moment fresh reasons are found for loving or hating better.

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

Ideas devour the ages as men are devoured by their passions. When man is cured, human nature will cure itself perhaps.