Honoré De Balzac Quotes

Man cannot spend all his time doing evil, and even in the company of pirates there must be some sweet moments on their sinister ship when you feel as if you were aboard a pleasure yacht.

~ Honoré De Balzac

No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.

~ Honoré De Balzac

Man can start with aversion and end with love, but if he begins with love and comes round to aversion he will never get back to love.

~ Honoré De Balzac

Such is life. It is no cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands; the real art is in getting them clean again, and therein lies the whole morality of our epoch.

~ Honoré De Balzac

In Paris, when certain people see you ready to set your foot in the stirrup, some pull your coat-tails, others loosen the buckle of the strap that you may fall and crack your skull; one wrenches off your horse's shoes, another steals your whip, and the least treacherous of them all is the man whom you see coming to fire his pistol at you point blank.

~ Honoré De Balzac

No one was irritable; we have never known anyone to remain unhappy while digesting a good meal. We enjoy lingering in a becalmed state, a kind of midpoint between the reverie of a thinker and the contentment of a cud-chewing animal, a state that should be termed the physical melancholy of gastronomy.

~ Honoré De Balzac

Hortense was a wife; Valerie a mistress.Many men desire to have these two editions of the same work, although it is proof of deep inferiority in a man if he cannot make his wife his mistress. Seeking variety is a sign of impotence.

~ Honoré De Balzac

Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.

~ Honoré De Balzac

Though the human heart may have to pause for rest when climbing the heights of affection it rarely stops on the slippery slope of hatred.

~ Honoré De Balzac

Of necessity she went further in aversion than she had gone in love, for her hatred was not in proportion to her love but to her disappointed hopes.

~ Honoré De Balzac

So, my dear fellow, if I don't believe in God, I believe still less in man.

~ Honoré De Balzac

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

~ Honoré De Balzac

He hesitated till the last moment, but finally dropped them in the box, saying, I shall win!--the cry of a gambler, the cry of the great general, the compulsive cry that has ruined more men than it has ever saved.

~ Honoré De Balzac

If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one ... he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent.

~ Honoré De Balzac

He became...the ideal of that virtue which delights in its own work...doing everything with simplicity and dignity, for he seemed to realize that his objective added nobility to everything he did.

~ Honoré De Balzac

Here comes Mamma Vauquerr, fair as a starrr; and strung up like a bunch of carrots. Aren't we suffocating ourselves a wee bit?' he asked, placing a hand on the top of her corset. 'A bit of a crush in the vestibule, here, Mamma! If we start crying, there'll be an explosion. Never mind, I'll be there to collect the bits--just like an antiquary.''Now, there's the language of true French gallantry,' murmured Madame Vauquer in an aside to Madame Couture.

~ Honoré De Balzac

A man like you is a god, not just a machine covered with skin, but a theater where fine feelings sprout and grow-and feelings are all that matters, as far as I'm concerned. Is a feeling anything but an entire world poured into a thought?

~ Honoré De Balzac

We flew back home like swallows. 'Is it happiness that makes us so light?' Agathe asked.

~ Honoré De Balzac

Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.

~ Honoré De Balzac

The word 'love,' used in connection with the reproduction of our species, is the most odious blasphemy taught in our times.

~ Honoré De Balzac

Alas! Where love is concerned, self-interested deception is superior to the truth itself, which is why so many men pay so high a price to clever deceivers.

~ Honoré De Balzac

There are moments in life when all that we can bear is the sense that our friend is near us our wounds would wince at consoling words that would reveal the depths of our pain.

~ Honoré De Balzac

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

~ Honoré De Balzac

Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.

~ Honoré De Balzac

Emulation admires and strives to imitate great actions envy is only moved to malice.

~ Honoré De Balzac

Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself.

~ Honoré De Balzac

True love is eternal infinite and always like itself. It is equal and pure without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.

~ Honoré De Balzac

True love is eternal infinite and always like itself. It is equal and pure without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.

~ Honoré De Balzac

All happiness depends on courage and work. I have had many periods of wretchedness but with energy and above all with illusions I pulled through them all.

~ Honoré De Balzac

A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.

~ Honoré De Balzac

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

~ Honoré De Balzac

True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.

~ 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

Love is the poetry of the senses.

~ Honoré De Balzac

A mother who is really a mother is never free.

~ Honoré De Balzac

Clouds symbolize the veils that shroud God.

~ Honoré De Balzac

Political liberty, the peace of a nation, and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a heavy tax in blood!

~ Honoré De Balzac

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

~ Honoré De Balzac

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

~ Honoré De Balzac

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

~ Honoré De Balzac