Honore de Balzac

Find the best quotes, maxims and aphorisms of Honore de Balzac

Biography : French novelist and playwright.
Born: 1799 - Died: 1850
Period:
19th century
18th century
Place of birth: France
France

France

Honore de Balzac - Quotes

We respect a man who respects himself.
Honore de Balzac - Sur Catherine de Médicis /

We respect a man who respects himself.

Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.
Honore de Balzac /

And wisdom in life is perhaps to ask for anything, why?
Honore de Balzac /

Man is neither good nor bad, he is born with instincts and aptitudes.
Honore de Balzac - La Comédie humaine /

Life cannot go on without a great deal of forgetting.
Honore de Balzac - Scenes from Parisian life /

Love is not merely a sentiment, it is an art.
Honore de Balzac - The Quest of the Absolute /

Love is the poetry of the senses.
Honore de Balzac /

Wisdom is that apprehension of heavenly things to which the spirit rises through love.
Honore de Balzac /

The finest things in life are life’s illusions.
Honore de Balzac /

Virtue, perhaps, is nothing more than politeness of soul.
Honore de Balzac /

People who want something strongly enough are almost always well served by chance.
Honore de Balzac /

The mission of art is not to copy nature, but to express it!
Honore de Balzac /

Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper, and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.
Honore de Balzac

Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.
Honore de Balzac

heart

Finance, like time, devours its own children.
Honore de Balzac

time

For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.
Honore de Balzac

The fact is that love is of two kinds, one which commands, and one which obeys. The two are quite distinct, and the passion to which the one gives rise is not the passion of the other.
Honore de Balzac

love

A grocer is attracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the repulsion which renders it odious to artists.
Honore de Balzac

Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane.
Honore de Balzac

love

The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute.
Honore de Balzac

We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.
Honore de Balzac

happiness

Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.
Honore de Balzac

It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.
Honore de Balzac

It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion it is a joy of every moment.
Honore de Balzac

Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.
Honore de Balzac

A mother who is really a mother is never free.
Honore de Balzac

A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.
Honore de Balzac

I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race.
Honore de Balzac

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.
Honore de Balzac

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