Honoré de Balzac > Quotes

“Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine.”
― Honoré de Balzac

“Reading brings us unknown friends”
― Honore de Balzac

“The more one judges, the less one loves.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Physiologie Du Mariage: Ou Meditations De Philosophie Eclectique, Sur Le Bonheur Et Le Malheur Conjugal

“All happiness depends on courage and work.”
― Honoré de Balzac

“Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.”
― Honore de Balzac

“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.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot

“Women are always true, even in the midst of their greatest falsities, because they are always influenced by some natural feeling.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot

“Some day you will find out that there is far more happiness in another's happiness than in your own.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot

“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”
― Honoré de Balzac

“Every moment of happiness requires a great amount of Ignorance”
― Honoré de Balzac

“Our greatest fears lie in anticipation.”
― Balzac

“Marriage must fight constantly against a monster which devours everything: routine.”
― Honore de Balzac

“It is absurd to pretend that one cannot love the same woman always, as to pretend that a good artist needs several violins to execute a piece of music.”
― Honore de Balzac

“for a woman knows the face of the man she loves like a sailor knows the open sea”
― Honore de Balzac

“The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness”
― Honore de Balzac

“There is no such thing as a great talent without great willpower.”
― Honoré de Balzac

“I am not deep, but I am very wide.”
― Balzac

“I'm a great poet. I don't put my poems on paper: they consist of actions and feelings.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot

“Ah! What pleasure it must be to a woman to suffer for the one she loves!”
― Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot

“Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.”
― Honore de Balzac

“Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.”
― Honore de Balzac

“Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?”
― Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot

“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.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot

“An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.”
― Honore de Balzac

“True love is eternal, infinite and always like itself. It's always equal and pure. Without violent demonstrations: It is seen with white hairs and is always young at heart.”
― Honore de Balzac

“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.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot

“Passion is born deaf and dumb.”
― Honore de Balzac

“This coffee falls into your stomach, and straightway there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army on the battlefield, and the battle takes place. Things remembered arrive at full gallop, ensign to the wind. The light cavalry of comparisons deliver a magnificent deploying charge, the artillery of logic hurry up with their train and ammunition, the shafts of wit start up like sharpshooters. Similes arise, the paper is covered with ink; for the struggle commences and is concluded with torrents of black water, just as a battle with powder.”
― Honoré de Balzac

“Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.”
― Honoré de Balzac

“Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.”
― Honoré de Balzac