Honoré de Balzac quotes - page 9

When religion and royalty are destroyed the people will attack the nobles; after the nobles, the rich. (Honoré de Balzac)
Ideas consume the ages as passions consume men. When man is cured, humanity may possibly cure itself. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
A widow has two tasks before her, whose duties clash: she is a mother, and yet she must exercise paternal authority. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Lucidity of mind, like the rays of the sun, can have no effect except by the continuity of a direct line; it can divine only on condition of not breaking that line; the curvettings of chance bemuddle it. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Every moment of happiness requires a great amount of Ignorance. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent idealsthat is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Hatred is the vice of narrow souls they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
We cannot confront solitude without moral resources. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
A woman must be a genius to create a good husband. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Physically, a man is a man for a much longer time than a woman is a woman. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Nothing is as heady as the wine of misfortune. (Honoré de Balzac)
Hope is a light diet, but very stimulating. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
There are no little events with the heart. It magnifies everything it places in the same scales the fall of an empire of fourteen years and the dropping of a woman's glove, and almost always the glove weighs more than the empire. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings. Virtue in Provence, in Constantinople, in London, and in Paris bears very different fruit, but is none the less virtue. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
All happiness depends on courage and work. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Friendships last when each friend thinks he has a slight superiority over the other. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Numbers are intellectual witnesses that belong only to mankind. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
It is as easy to dream a book as it is hard to write one. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
This surface good-nature which captivates a new acquaintance and is no bar to treachery, which knows no scruple and is never at fault for an excuse, which makes an outcry at the wound which it condones, is one of the most distinctive features of the journalist. 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. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
A penniless man who has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless wretch who is in love no longer belongs to himself, and may not take his own life. 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
One exits with one's husband -- one lives with one's lover. (Honoré de Balzac)
You may imitate, but never counterfeit. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
With monuments as with men, position means everything. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
A married woman is a slave you must know how to seat upon a throne. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
The glory of surgeons is like that of actors, who exist only in their lifetime and whose talent is no longer appreciable once they have disappeared. View quote
Honoré de Balzac