Honoré De Balzac Quotes
Some day you will find out that there is far more happiness in another's happiness than in your own.
Ah! What pleasure it must be to a woman to suffer for the one she loves!
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.
Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.
A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of the speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the richest treasures of love.
Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?
Marriage must fight constantly against a monster which devours everything: routine.
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.
The human heart may find here and there a resting-place short of the highest height of affection, but we seldom stop in the steep, downward slope of hatred.
Is there any instinct more deeply implanted in the heart of man than the pride of protection, a protection which is constantly exerted for a fragile and defenceless creature?
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.
If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.
We flew back home like swallows. 'Is it happiness that makes us so light?' Agathe asked.
It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.
Women are always true, even in the midst of their greatest falsities, because they are always influenced by some natural feeling.
And he, like many jaded people, had few pleasures left in life save good food and drink.
If the human heart sometimes finds moments of pause as it ascends the slopes of affection, it rarely halts on the way down.
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.
The word 'love, ' used in connection with the reproduction of our species, is the most odious blasphemy taught in our times.
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.
So, my dear fellow, if I don't believe in God, I believe still less in man.
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.
Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.
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.
Cruelty and fear shake hands together. An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.
Poverty has in its favour an exquisite sleep filled with beautiful dreams.
Happy?" asked Aquilina, with dreadful look, and a smile full of pity and terror. "Ah, you do not know what it is to be condemned to a life of pleasure.
Doing his utmost, deploying all his energy, a young man setting out from zero can wind up after ten years somewhere below where he started.
