Quotes By Honore De Balzac

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

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

What is art? Nature concentrated.

Conscience is our unerring judge until we finally stifle it.

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

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

It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.

It would be curious to know what leads a man to become a stationer rather than a baker, when he is no longer compelled, as among the Egyptians, to succeed to his father's craft.

Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.

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

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

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.

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

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

Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.

Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.

Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.

Towns find it as hard as houses of business to rise again from ruin.

If those who are the enemies of innocent amusements had the direction of the world, they would take away the spring, and youth, the former from the year, the latter from human life.

Men die in despair, while spirits die in ecstasy.

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

There are some women whose pregnancy would make some sly bachelor smile.

There is something great and terrible about suicide.

Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society.

Our most bitter enemies are our own kith and kin. Kings have no brothers, no sons, no mother!

Thought is a key to all treasures; the miser's gains are ours without his cares. Thus I have soared above this world, where my enjoyment have been intellectual joys.

A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.

A lover always thinks of his mistress first and himself second; with a husband it runs the other way.

I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race.

Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.