Honoré de Balzac quotes - page 4

A society of atheists would immediately invent a religion. (Honoré de Balzac)
The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman emancipation means corruption. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Marriage must perforce fight against the all-devouring monster of habit. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
The most real of all splendors are not in outward things, they are within us. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
White and shining virgin of all human virtues, ark of the covenant between earth and heaven, tender and strong companion partaking of the lion and of the lamb, Prayer! Prayer will give you the key of heaven! Bold and pure as innocence, strong, like all that is single and simple, this glorious, invincible Queen rests, nevertheless, on the material world; she takes possession of it; like the sun, she clasps it in a circle of light. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Love is precisely to the moral nature what the sun is to the earth. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
There are two kinds of poets: those who feel and those who express themselves. The former are happier. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
A year at the breast is quite enough; children who are suckled longer are said to grow stupid, and I am all for popular sayings. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
There are some women whose pregnancy would make some sly bachelor smile. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
For pain is perhaps but a violent pleasure? Who could determine the point where pleasure becomes pain, where pain is still a pleasure Is not the utmost brightness of the ideal world soothing to us, while the lightest shadows of the physical world annoy? (Honoré de Balzac)
Clouds signify the veil of the Most High. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Remorse is impotence, impotence which sins again. Repentance alone is powerful; it ends all. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Marriage is a fight to the death, before which the wedded couple ask a blessing from heaven, because it is the rashest of all undertakings to swear eternal love; the fight at once commences and victory, that is to say liberty, remains in the hands of the cleverer of the two. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Music is of two kinds: one petty, poor, second-rate, never varying, its base the hundred or so phrasings which all musicians understand, a babbling which is more or less pleasant, the life that most composers live. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
But does not happiness come from the soul within? View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Love may be the fairest gem which Society has filched from Nature; but what is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood? A smile has dried my tears. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Women, perhaps, even require a little hypocrisy. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
The passion of love is essentially selfish, while motherhood widens the circle of our feelings. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint the second time. (Honoré de Balzac)
Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
The virtue of women is perhaps a question of temperament. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
If you are to judge a man, you must know his secret thoughts, sorrows, and feelings; to know merely the outward events of a man's life would only serve to make a chronological table - a fool's notion of history. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Thought is a key to all treasures; the miser's gains are ours without his cares. Thus I have soared above this world, where my enjoyment have been intellectual joys. View quote
Honoré de Balzac