La puissance ne consiste pas à frapper fort ou souvent, mais à frapper juste. - Honoré de Balzac

Plenty of things in life are superlatively uninteresting; so that it is one-half of art to select from realities those which contain the possibility of poetry

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

Little minds need to practise despotism to relieve their nerves, just as great souls thirst for equality in friendship to exercise their hearts. Narrow natures expand by persecuting as much as others through beneficence; they prove their power over their fellows by cruel tyranny as others do by loving kindness; they simply go the way their temperaments drive them. Add to this the propulsion of self-interest and you may read the enigma of most social matters.