Famous Quotes

Quotes by Honore De Balzac

• Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.
• Political liberty, the peace of a nation, and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a heavy tax in blood!
• Power is action the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.
• Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.
• Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.
• Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.
• Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society?
• The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute.
• 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.
• The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.
• 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.
• The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.
• The most virtuous women have something within them, something that is never chaste.
• The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom to serve all, but love only one.
• The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition.
• There are some women whose pregnancy would make some sly bachelor smile.
• There is no such thing as a great talent without great will power.
• There is something great and terrible about suicide.
• To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.
• Towns find it as hard as houses of business to rise again from ruin.
• 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.
• We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.
• What is art? Nature concentrated.
• When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great, they will fall upon the rich.
• When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues.
• Wisdom is that apprehension of heavenly things to which the spirit rises through love.
• Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect without esteem they cannot exist esteem is the first demand that they make of love.