Honoré de Balzac Quotes

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

Manners are the hypocrisy of nations.

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.

La vertu des femmes est peut-être une question de tempérament.

You know what my religion is. I am not orthodox, and I do not believe in the Roman Church. I think that if there is a scheme worthy of our kind it is that of human transformations causing the human being to advance toward unknown zones. That is the law of creations inferior to ourselves; it ought to be the law of superior creations. Swedenborgianism, which is only a repetition in the Christian sense of ancient ideas, is my religion, with the addition which I wish to make to it of the incomprehensibility of God.

Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer – Death has never forsaken any man

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

La faute des hommes supérieurs est de dépenser leurs jeunes années à se rendre dignes de la faveur. Pendant qu'ils thésaurisent, leur force est la science pour porter sans effort le poids d'une puissance qui les fuit ; les intrigants, riches de mots et dépourvus d'idées, vont et viennent, surprennent les sots, et se logent dans la confiance des demi-niais.

Avoir sa belle-mère en province quand on demeure à Paris, et vice versa, est une de ces bonnes fortunes qui se rencontrent toujours trop rarement.

True love is eternal, infinite and always like itself. It's always equal and pure. Without violent demonstrations: It is seen with white hairs and is always young at heart.

Le courant des affaires devant toujours s'expédier, il surnage une certaine quantité de commis qui se sait indispensable quoique congéable à merci et qui veut rester en place. La bureaucratie, pouvoir gigantesque mis en mouvement par des nains, est née ainsi. Si en subordonnant toute chose et tout homme à sa volonté, Napoléon avait retardé pour un moment l'influence de la bureaucratie, ce rideau pesant placé entre le bien à faire et celui qui peut l'ordonner, elle s'était définitivement organisée sous le gouvernement constitutionnel, nécessairement ami des médiocrités, grand amateur de pièces probantes et de comptes, enfin tracassier comme une petite bourgeoise.

Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.

A mother, who is really a mother, is never free.

So, my dear fellow, if I don't believe in God, I believe still less in man.

Was she acting entirely consciously? No: women are always sincere, even in the midst of their most shocking duplicities, because it is always some natural emotion which dominates them. Perhaps, having given this young man such a hold on her, by having openly demonstrated her affection for him, Delphine was merely responding to a sense of personal dignity, which led her either to revoke any concessions she might have made or, at least, to enjoy suspending them. Even at the very moment when passion seizes her, it is perfectly natural for a Parisian woman to delay her final fall, as a way of testing the heart of the man into whose hands she is about to deliver herself and her future!