Explore Quotes by Honore De Balzac

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

Political liberty, the peace of a nation, and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a heavy tax in blood!

Lovers have a way of using this word "nothing" which implies exactly the opposite.

Ideas devour the ages as men are devoured by their passions. When man is cured, human nature will cure itself perhaps.

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

Death unites as well as separates; it silences all paltry feeling.

Conscience is our unerring judge until we finally stifle it.

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.

Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love.

Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society?

Our most bitter enemies are our own kith and kin. Kings have no brothers, no sons, no mother!

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

Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.

In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.

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

At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist; there can only be promise of the coming woman.

Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.

A grocer is attracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the repulsion which renders it odious to artists.

When law becomes despotic, morals are relaxed, and vice versa.

The duration of passion is proportionate with the original resistance of the woman.

What is art? Nature concentrated.