Honoré de Balzac Quotes

The more he saw, the more he doubted. He watched men narrowly, and saw how, beneath the surface, courage was often rashness; and prudence, cowardice; generosity, a clever piece of calculation; justice, a wrong; delicacy, pusillanimity; honesty, a modus vivendi; and by some strange dispensation of fate, he must see that those who at heart were really honest, scrupulous, just, generous, prudent or brave were held cheaply by their fellow-men.
‘What a cold-blooded jest!’ said he to himself. ‘It was not devised by a God.’
From that time forth he renounced a better world, and never uncovered himself when a Name was pronounced, and for him the carven saints in the churches became works of art

Thinking is seeing, said he one day, carried away by some objection raised as to the first principles of our organisation. Every human science is based on deduction, which is a slow process of seeing by which we work up from the effect to the cause; or, in a wider sense, all poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things.

Les musiciennes sont presque toujours amoureuses. Celle qui chantait ainsi devait savoir bien aimer.

La mort rapproche autant qu’elle sépare, elle fait taire les passions mesquines.

Women, perhaps, even require a little hypocrisy.

La province est la province : elle est ridicule quand elle veut singer Paris.

Être aimé d'elle, ou mourir.

A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of the speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the richest treasures of love.

Do you know how a man makes his way here? By brilliant genius or by skilful corruption. You must either cut your way through these masses of men like a cannon ball, or steal among them like a plague.

Il y a deux amours : celui qui commande et celui qui obéit ; ils sont distincts et donnent naissance à deux passions, et l’une n’est pas l’autre.

I yield to your wishes. It is the privilege of the women whom we love more than they love us to make the men who love them ignore the ordinary rules of common-sense.

Pierre l'Ermite, Calvin et Robespierre, chacun à trois cents ans de distance, ces trois Picards ont été, politiquement parlant, des leviers d'Archimède.C'était à chaque époque une pensée qui recontrait un point d'appel dans les intérêts et chez les hommes.

Journalism, look you, is the religion of modern society.

I am tormented by temptations. What kind? There is a cure for temptation. What? Yielding to it.

Mes avis sur vos relations avec les femmes sont aussi dans ce mot de chevalerie : Les servir toutes, n'en aimer qu'une.