Honore De Balzac Quotes

The glutton is much more than an animal and much less than a man.

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

People who are in love suspect nothing or everything.

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

All human power is a compound of time and patience.

What a thing of fantasy a woman may become after dusk.

Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer – Death has never forsaken any man

It is quite right what they say: the three most beautiful sights in the world are a ship in full sail, a galloping horse, and a woman dancing.

Noble hearts are neither jealous nor afraid because jealousy spells doubt and fear spells pettiness.

The more you judge, the less you love.

Emulation is not rivalry. Emulation is the child of ambition; rivalry is the unlovable daughter of envy.

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 husband who submits to his wife's yoke is justly held an object of ridicule. A woman's influence ought to be entirely concealed.

The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition.

Man is no match for woman where mischief reigns.

To promote laughter without joining in it greatly heightens the effect.

When we drink coffee, ideas march in like the army

God is the poet; men are but the actors. The great dramas of earth were written in heaven.

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.

Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.

Modesty is the conscience of the body.

Want him to be more of a man? Try being more of a woman!

Old men are prone to invest the futures of young men with their own past sorrows.

A mother who is really a mother is never free.

Envy lurks at the bottom of the human heart like a viper in its hole.

Does anyone know where these gondolas of Paris come from? [Fr., Ne sait on pas ou viennent ces gondoles Parisiennes?]

Vice is perhaps a desire to learn everything.

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.

Temperament is the thermometer of character.

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

The greater a man's talents, the more marked his idiosyncracies. Yet in the provinces originality is considered perilously close to lunacy.

God is the author, men are only the players. These grand pieces which are played upon earth have been composed in heaven.

Art's greatest efforts are invariably a timid counterfeit of Nature.

It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment.

Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.

It is a singular fact that most men of action incline to the theory of fatalism, while the greater part of men of thought believe in providence.

Carelessness in dressing is moral suicide.

A man is a poor creature compared to a woman.

As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move…similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle.

Clouds symbolize the veils that shroud God.

The first thing necessary to win the heart of a woman is opportunity.

Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.

Men die in despair, while spirits die in ecstasy.

Forgetting is the great secret of strong and creative lives.

To say to a rich man: You are poor! is to tell the Archbishop of Granada that his sermons are worthless.

There are two histories : official history, lying, and then secret history, where you find the real causes of events.

Nowhere but in France are people so strictly observant of great matters and so disdainfully indulgent about small ones.

Envy is the most stupid of vices, for there is no single advantage to be gained from it.

Men who pay their tailors never amount to anything, they never even become Cabinet ministers.

In a husband, there is only a man; in a married woman, there is a man, a father, a mother and a woman.