Honoré de Balzac Quotes

Man can start with aversion and end with love, but if he begins with love and comes round to aversion he will never get back to love.

Notre cœur est un trésor, videz-le d'un coup, vous êtes ruinés. Nous ne pardonnons pas plus à un sentiment de s'être montré tout entier qu'à un homme de ne pas avoir un sou à lui.

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.

Suicide, moreover, was at that time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society?

L’homme qui nous parle est l’amant, l’homme qui ne nous parle plus est le mari.

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.

Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?

Like many widows, she came to the unwise decision of remarrying.

Une veuve a deux tâches dont les obligations se contredisent : elle est mère et doit exercer la puissance paternelle.

Girls brought up as you were, in a very strait-laced and puritan fashion, always pant for liberty and happiness, and the happiness they have never comes up to what they imagined. Those are the girls that make bad wives.

Les vieilles filles n'ayant pas fait plier leur caractère et leur vie à une autre vie ni à d'autres caractères, comme l'exige la destinée de la femme, ont, pour la plupart, la manie de vouloir tout faire plier autour d'elles.

Of necessity she went further in aversion than she had gone in love, for her hatred was not in proportion to her love but to her disappointed hopes.

The next day Rastignac dressed himself very elegantly, and about three o'clock in the afternoon went to call on Mme. de Restaud. On the way thither he indulged in the wild intoxicating dreams which fill a young head so full of delicious excitement. Young men at his age take no account of obstacles nor of dangers; they see success in every direction; imagination has free play, and turns their lives into a romance; they are saddened or discouraged by the collapse of one of the visionary schemes that have no existence save in their heated fancy. If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.

Mankind are not perfect, but one age is more or less hypocritical than another, and then simpletons say that its morality is high or low.

Life — is it anything more than a machine to which money imparts the motion?