Honore de Balzac Quotes - Page 26

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

  Honore de Balzac

  Heart, Exercise, Equality

  12 Copy quote

• To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.

  Honore de Balzac

  Exhausted, Abstract, Remains

  8 Copy quote

• The man whose action habitually bears the stamp of his mind is a genius, but the greatest genius is not always equal to himself, or he would cease to be human.

  Honore de Balzac

  Men, Mind, Genius

  "A Daughter of Eve". Book by Honoré de Balzac, 1839.

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Honore de Balzac

  Father, Men, Bakers

  8 Copy quote

• However gross a man may be, the minute he expresses a strong and genuine affection, some inner secretion alters his features, animates his gestures, and colors his voice. The stupidest man will often, under the stress of passion, achieve heights of eloquence, in thought if not in language, and seem to move in some luminous sphere. Goriot's voice and gesture had at this moment the power of communication that characterizes the great actor. Are not our finer feelings the poems of the human will?

  Honore de Balzac

  Strong, Stress, Moving

  4 Copy quote

• The errors of women spring, almost always, from their faith in the good, or their confidence in the true

  Honore de Balzac

  Spring, Mistake, Errors

  7 Copy quote

• A sacrament by virtue of which each imparts nothing but vexations to the other.

  Honore de Balzac

  Marriage, Vexation, Virtue

  4 Copy quote

• In France everything is a matter for jest. People make quips about the scaffold, about Napoleon's defeat on the banks of The Beresina, and about the barricades of our revolutions. So, at the assizes of the Last Judgment, there will always be a Frenchmen to crack a joke.

  Honore de Balzac

  People, Cracks, Matter

  8 Copy quote

• We have long struggles with ourself, of which the outcome is one of our actions; they are, as it were, the inner side of human nature. This inner side is God's; the outer side belongs to men.

  Honore de Balzac

  Struggle, Men, Long

  "Seraphita". Book by Honoré de Balzac, 1835.

  4 Copy quote

• Misfortune, no less than happiness, inspires us to dream.

  Honore de Balzac

  Dream, Inspire, Misfortunes

  4 Copy quote

• Some troubles, like a protested note of a solvent debtor, bear interest.

  Honore de Balzac

  Forgiveness, Bears, Debtors

  4 Copy quote

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

  Honore de Balzac

  Role Models, Envy, Emulation

  7 Copy quote

• If certain women walk straight into adultery, there are many others who cling to numerous hopes, and commit sin only after wandering through a maze of sorrows.

  Honore de Balzac

  Sorrow, Mazes, Sin

  8 Copy quote

• Tradesmen regard an author with a mixed feeling of terror, compassion and curiosity.

  Honore de Balzac

  Compassion, Feelings, Curiosity

  4 Copy quote

• Constancy will always be the genius of love, the indication of that strength which constitutes the poet. A man should possess all women in his wife, like those squalid poetasters of the seventeenth century who made fair Irises and dazzling Chloes of their lowly Manons.

  Honore de Balzac

  Men, Wife, Irises

  11 Copy quote

• Does not any limit imposed upon one inspire a desire to go beyond it? Does not our keenest suffering arise when our free will is crossed?

  Honore de Balzac

  Inspire, Suffering, Desire

  4 Copy quote

• Gentleness in the gait is what simplicity is in the dress. Violent gestures or quick movements inspire involuntary disrespect.

  Honore de Balzac

  Simplicity, Inspire, Disrespect

  10 Copy quote

• What moralist can deny that well-bred and vicious people are much more agreeable than their virtuous counterparts? Having crimes to atone for, they provisionally solicit indulgence by showing leniency toward the defects of their judges. Thus they pass for excellent folk.

  Honore de Balzac

  People, Judging, Crime

  4 Copy quote

• A careful observation of Nature will disclose pleasantries of superb irony. She has for instance placed toads close to flowers.

  Honore de Balzac

  Nature, Flower, Toads

  7 Copy quote

• Alas, two men are often necessary to provide a woman with a perfect lover, just as in literature a writer composes a type only by employing the singularities of several similar characters.

  Honore de Balzac

  Character, Men, Two

  4 Copy quote

• Many of us marvel at the icy insensitivity with which women snuff out their armours. But if they did not blot out the past in this manner, life for them would lose all dignity and they could never resist the fatal familiarities to which they once submitted.

  Honore de Balzac

  Past, Icy, Snuff

  4 Copy quote

• Marriage is a fight to the death. Before contracting it, the two parties concerned implore the benediction of Heaven because to promise to love each other forever is the rashest of enterprises.

  Honore de Balzac

  Marriage, Party, Fighting

  4 Copy quote

• We must have books for recreation and entertainment, as well as books for instruction and for business; the former are agreeable, the latter useful, and the human mind requires both. The cannon law and the codes of Justinian shall have due honor, and reign at the universities; but Homer and Virgil need not therefore be banished. We will cultivate the olive and the vine, but without eradicating the myrtle and the rose.

  Honore de Balzac

  Book, Law, Rose

  6 Copy quote

• In the silence of their studios, busied for days at a time with works which leave the mind relatively free, painters become like women; their thoughts can revolve around the minor facts of life and penetrate their hidden meaning.

  Honore de Balzac

  Silence, Mind, Facts

  5 Copy quote

• It is very difficult to pass from pleasure to work. Accordingly more poems have been swallowed up by sorrow than ever happiness caused to blaze forth in unparalleled radiance.

  Honore de Balzac

  Poetry, Sorrow, Radiance

  4 Copy quote

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