Honore De Balzac

If the human heart sometimes finds moments of pause as it ascends the slopes of affection, it rarely halts on the way down.

Good befalls us while we sleep, sometimes.

And he, like many jaded people, had few pleasures left in life save good food and drink.

Women are always true, even in the midst of their greatest falsities, because they are always influenced by some natural feeling.

Ah! What pleasure it must be to a woman to suffer for the one she loves!

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.

We flew back home like swallows. 'Is it happiness that makes us so light?' Agathe asked.

Marriage must fight constantly against a monster which devours everything: routine.

Our greatest fears lie in anticipation.

A murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his vileness pervades every moment of his life

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

Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.