Honoré de Balzac Quotes

The duchess turned on Eugène with one of those insolent stares that envelop a man from head to foot, flatten him out, and leave him at zero.

L’homme subjugué par sa femme est justement couvert de ridicule. L’influence d’une femme doit être entièrement secrète.

Paris that eternal monstrous marvel … the city of a hundred-thousand novels … a living creature, the great courtesan whose face and heart and mind-boggling morals they know: “They” are the lovers of Paris.

Борьба имеет свою прелесть. Бороться - значит жить, пусть борьба приносит горе, пусть она ранит, - все лучше, чем беспросветный мрак отвращения, яд презрительной замкнутости, холод тех, кто отрекся от борьбы, чем смерть сердца, которая зовется равнодушием.

I haven't any objection to your thoroughly despising me, right now, because I'm convinced you'll come to love me. You'll find I have some tremendous abysses, some huge, focused emotions that fools think of as vices, but you'll never find me lazy, and you'll never find me ungrateful. In a word, I'm neither a pawn nor a bishop, my young friend, but a castle.

Life cannot go on without a great deal of forgetting.

A widow has two tasks before her, whose duties clash: she is a mother, and yet she must exercise paternal authority.

Hortense was a wife; Valerie a mistress.
Many men desire to have these two editions of the same work, although it is proof of deep inferiority in a man if he cannot make his wife his mistress. Seeking variety is a sign of impotence.

I prefer thought to action, an idea to a transaction, contemplation to activity.

If you are to judge a man, you must know his secret thoughts, sorrows, and feelings; to know merely the outward events of a man’s life would only serve to make a chronological table — a fool’s notion of history.

Sufferings predispose the mind to devotion, and nearly all young girls, impelled by instinctive tenderness, are inclined to mysticism, the deepest aspect of religion.

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

Women themselves are so happy, and so beautiful, when they're strong, that they naturally choose powerful men, even if that power's so enermous there's a real risk it could shatter them.

Qui dépense trop n’est jamais riche.

A young man is to crime what a penny is to the X.