Honoré de Balzac quotes - page 10

This camaraderie (the word is a stroke of genius) corrodes the noblest minds; it eats into their pride like rust, kills the germ of great deeds, and lends a sanction to moral cowardice. (Honoré de Balzac)
To saunter is a science; it is the gastronomy of the eye. To take a walk is to vegetate; to saunter is to live... View quote
Honoré de Balzac
A grocer is drawn to his business by an attracting force quite equal to the repelling force which drives artists away from it. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Little minds need to practise despotism to relieve their nerves, just as great souls thirst for equality in friendship to exercise their hearts. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
A country is strong which consists of wealthy families, every member of whom is interested in defending a common treasure; it is weak when composed of scattered individuals, to whom it matters little whether they obey seven or one. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
The body may fear and tremble, while the mind is calm and courageous, or vice versa. This is the key to many moral eccentricities. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
A child is tied to our heart-strings, as the spheres are linked to their creator; we cannot think of God except as a mother's heart writ large. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes; it is the life of another that we revere within us; then and so begins for us the cruelest trouble of all. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Bureaucracy, the giant power wielded by pigmies, came into the world. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Science depresses man; Love exalts the Angel. Science is still seeking, Love has found. Man judges Nature according to his own relations to her; the Angelic Spirit judges it in its relation to Heaven. In short, all things have a voice for the Spirit. (Honoré de Balzac)
True love is eternal, infinite, always like unto itself; it is equable, pure, without violent demonstration. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Thought is a key to all treasures; the miser's gains are ours without his cares. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Love is the most melodious of all harmonies and the sentiment of love is innate. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Science is the language of the Temporal world, Love is that of the Spiritual world. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Man has sufficient cause for tears without adding to them by books. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
A country is strong which consists of wealthy families, every member of whom is interested in defending a common treasure; it is weak when composed of scattered individuals, to whom it matters little whether they obey seven or one, a Russian or a Corsican, so long as each keeps his own plot of land, blind in their wretched egotism, to the fact that the day is coming when this too will be torn from them. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
We must certainly acknowledge that solitude is a fine thing but it is a pleasure to have some one who can answer, And to whom we can say, from time to time, that solitude is a fine thing. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Believe everything you hear said of the world nothing is too impossibly bad. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Necessity is the spur of genius. (Honoré de Balzac)
Journalism is a giant catapult set in motion by pygmy hatreds. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
The next day Rastignac dressed himself very elegantly, and about three o'clock in the afternoon went to call on Mme. de Restaud. On the way thither he indulged in the wild intoxicating dreams which fill a young head so full of delicious excitement. Young men at his age take no account of obstacles nor of dangers; they see success in every direction; imagination has free play, and turns their lives into a romance; they are saddened or discouraged by the collapse of one of the visionary schemes that have no existence save in their heated fancy. If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
True love is eternal, infinite, always like unto itself; it is equable, pure, without violent demonstration; white hair often covers the head, but the heart that holds it is ever young. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
He did the housework as Philopoemen sawed his wood, communicating the simplicity of doing to all his actions, maintaining his dignity, for he seemed to understand that the goal ennobles everything. View quote
Honoré de Balzac