Honoré de Balzac Quotes

It is absurd to pretend that one cannot love the same woman always, as to pretend that a good artist needs several violins to execute a piece of music.

Our most cruel enemies are our nearest in blood!... Kings have neither brothers, nor sons, nor mothers.

Qui parle trop veut tromper.

The man as he converses is the lover; silent, he is the husband.

Rien n'est-il si discret qu'un jeune visage, parce que rien n'est plus immobile. La figure d'une jeune femme a le calme, le poli, la fraîcheur de la surface d'un lac. La physionomie des femmes ne commence qu'à trente ans.

The Oratorian boarding school in Vendôme, which Balzac was sent to at a young age. It was a gruelling and miserable place to live, with severe monastic rules.

Il n’y a que des enfants aimants et aimés qui puissent consoler une femme de la perte de sa beauté.

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. 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.

We may scale cliffs; but to tramp forever in the mud is another thing.

Le propre d’un grand homme est de dérouter les calculs ordinaires. Il est sublime et attendrissant, naïf et gigantesque.

Remorse is impotence, impotence which sins again. Repentance alone is powerful; it ends all.

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.

First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint a second time.

La pensée est la clef de tous les trésors, elle procure les joies de l'avare sans donner ses soucis. Aussi ai-je plané sur le monde, où mes plaisirs ont toujours été des jouissances intellectuelles.

La bonté n'est pas sans écueils : on l'attribue au caractère, on veut rarement y reconnaître les efforts secrets d'une belle âme, tandis qu'on récompense les gens méchants du mal qu'ils ne font pas.