Honoré de Balzac Quotes

Most popular Honoré de Balzac Quotes

Thinking is seeing. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Thinking is seeing.
— Honoré de Balzac Louis Lambert

thinking

Love has its instinct. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Love has its instinct.
— Honoré de Balzac
Love is the poetry of the senses. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Love is the poetry of the senses.
— Honoré de Balzac

love

I am a galley slave to pen and ink. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
I am a galley slave to pen and ink.
— Honoré de Balzac

writers

Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.
— Honoré de Balzac Journals, 1889–1949

manners

What is Art ... but Nature concentrated? - Honoré de Balzac quote.
What is Art ... but Nature concentrated?
— Honoré de Balzac Lost Illusions

art

Behind every great fortune there is a crime. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
— Honoré de Balzac

cynical fortune wealth

A mother who is really a mother is never free. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
A mother who is really a mother is never free.
— Honoré de Balzac

parenting mother

Bureaucracy, a giant mechanism operated by pygmies. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Bureaucracy, a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
— Honoré de Balzac The Government Clerks

bureaucracy

We cannot confront solitude without moral resources. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
We cannot confront solitude without moral resources.
— Honoré de Balzac

solitude

I do not regard a [stock] broker as a member of the human race. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
I do not regard a [stock] broker as a member of the human race.
— Honoré de Balzac

financial industry

There is no such thing as a great talent without great willpower. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
There is no such thing as a great talent without great willpower.
— Honoré de Balzac
Virtue is, perhaps, no more than a kind of politeness of the soul. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Virtue is, perhaps, no more than a kind of politeness of the soul.
— Honoré de Balzac The Physiology of Marriage

virtue

A man should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
A man should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.
— Honoré de Balzac
Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.
— Honoré de Balzac The Viking Book of Aphorisms: A Personal Selection

power

Men are like that—they can resist sound argument and yield to a glance. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Men are like that—they can resist sound argument and yield to a glance.
— Honoré de Balzac A Marriage Settlement
An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.
— Honoré de Balzac

determination

In diving to the bottom of pleasures we bring up more gravel than pearls. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
In diving to the bottom of pleasures we bring up more gravel than pearls.
— Honoré de Balzac
In music, instruments perform the functions of the colors employed in painting. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
In music, instruments perform the functions of the colors employed in painting.
— Honoré de Balzac Gambara

musical instruments

Marriage must constantly fight against a monster which devours everything: routine. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Marriage must constantly fight against a monster which devours everything: routine.
— Honoré de Balzac The Physiology of Marriage

routine marriage

Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.
— Honoré de Balzac

equality

Emulation admires and strives to imitate great actions; envy is only moved to malice. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Emulation admires and strives to imitate great actions; envy is only moved to malice.
— Honoré de Balzac Day’s Collacon: An Encyclopaedia of Prose Quotations

envy

Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.
— Honoré de Balzac

marriage

A man cannot marry before he has studied anatomy and has dissected at least one woman. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
A man cannot marry before he has studied anatomy and has dissected at least one woman.
— Honoré de Balzac The Physiology of Marriage

marriage

Between you and me, I am not deep, but I am very wide, and it takes time to walk round me. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Between you and me, I am not deep, but I am very wide, and it takes time to walk round me.
— Honoré de Balzac
The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.
— Honoré de Balzac

mother

To feel, to love, to suffer, to devote herself will always be the text of the life of a woman. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
To feel, to love, to suffer, to devote herself will always be the text of the life of a woman.
— Honoré de Balzac
First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint the second time. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint the second time.
— Honoré de Balzac
Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.
— Honoré de Balzac La Maison Nucingen

vocation

The more he plumbed the depths of sensual pleasure, the more he emerged with grit rather than pearls. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
The more he plumbed the depths of sensual pleasure, the more he emerged with grit rather than pearls.
— Honoré de Balzac The Girl With the Golden Eyes

pleasure

Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself.
— Honoré de Balzac

be yourself dealing with people

Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.
— Honoré de Balzac

cynical friendship

Music appeals to the heart, whereas writing is addressed to the intellect; it communicates ideas directly, like perfume. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Music appeals to the heart, whereas writing is addressed to the intellect; it communicates ideas directly, like perfume.
— Honoré de Balzac Massimilla Doni

music

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. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
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.
— Honoré de Balzac A Woman of Thirty

men and women suffering

A mother's life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible.  Not an hour but has its joys and fears. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
A mother's life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible.  Not an hour but has its joys and fears.
— Honoré de Balzac Letters of Two Brides

motherhood

When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues.
— Honoré de Balzac

women love

Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.
— Honoré de Balzac A Woman of Thirty

love

It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the simple reason that it is more difficult to have a ready wit the whole day long than to say a good thing occasionally. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the simple reason that it is more difficult to have a ready wit the whole day long than to say a good thing occasionally.
— Honoré de Balzac The Physiology of Marriage

lovers

True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.
— Honoré de Balzac
I tell you, my friend, all happiness depends on courage and work.  I have had many periods of wretchedness, but with energy, and above all with illusions, I pulled through them all.  That is why I still hope, and hope much. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
I tell you, my friend, all happiness depends on courage and work.  I have had many periods of wretchedness, but with energy, and above all with illusions, I pulled through them all.  That is why I still hope, and hope much.
— Honoré de Balzac Honoré de Balzac: A Memoir

happiness

Woman is a delicious instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its quivering strings, study the pose of it, its timid keyboard, the changing and capricious fingering.  How many orangs—men, I mean, marry without knowing what a woman is! - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Woman is a delicious instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its quivering strings, study the pose of it, its timid keyboard, the changing and capricious fingering.  How many orangs—men, I mean, marry without knowing what a woman is!
— Honoré de Balzac The Physiology of Marriage

women

If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work...as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner...he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work...as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner...he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent.
— Honoré de Balzac La Cousine Bette

artists talent

Coffee falls into the your stomach, and straightaway there is a general commotion.  Ideas begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army on the battlefield, and the battle takes place.  Things remembered arrive at full gallop, ensign to the wind. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Coffee falls into the your stomach, and straightaway there is a general commotion.  Ideas begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army on the battlefield, and the battle takes place.  Things remembered arrive at full gallop, ensign to the wind.
— Honoré de Balzac Treatise on Modern Stimulants

coffee

Love is like some fresh spring that leaves its cresses, its gravel bed, and flowers to become first a stream and then a river, changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Love is like some fresh spring that leaves its cresses, its gravel bed, and flowers to become first a stream and then a river, changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation.
— Honoré de Balzac La Peau de chagrin

love

There is no such thing as a great talent without great will power.
— Honoré de Balzac

willpower