Honore de Balzac quotes

“Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself.”

— Honore de Balzac

“Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.”

— Honore de Balzac

“One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.”

— Honore de Balzac

“Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.”

— Honore de Balzac

“What is art? Nature concentrated. ”

— Honore de Balzac

“Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.”

— Honore de Balzac

“Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.”

— Honore de Balzac

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

— Honore de Balzac

“What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended?”

— Honore de Balzac

“Political liberty, the peace of a nation, and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a heavy tax in blood! ”

— Honore de Balzac

“Those who spend too fast never grow rich.”

— Honore de Balzac

“The habits of life form the soul, and the soul forms the countenance.”

— Honore de Balzac

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

— Honore de Balzac

“Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.”

— Honore de Balzac

“Ideas devour the ages as men are devoured by their passions. When man is cured, human nature will cure itself perhaps.”

— Honore de Balzac

“Study lends a kind of enchantment to all our surroundings.”

— Honore de Balzac

“To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.”

— Honore de Balzac

“Lovers have a way of using this word, nothing, which implies exactly the opposite.”

— Honore de Balzac

“Towns find it as hard as houses of business to rise again from ruin.”

— Honore de Balzac

“Wisdom is that apprehension of heavenly things to which the spirit rises through love.”

— Honore de Balzac

“It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment.”

— Honore de Balzac

“A husband who submits to his wife's yoke is justly held an object of ridicule. A woman's influence ought to be entirely concealed. ”

— Honore de Balzac

“Conscience is our unerring judge until we finally stifle it.”

— Honore de Balzac

“The country is provincial; it becomes ridiculous when it tries to ape Paris.”

— Honore de Balzac

“Death unites as well as separates; it silences all paltry feeling.”

— Honore de Balzac

“A grocer is attracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the repulsion which renders it odious to artists.”

— Honore de Balzac

“Clouds symbolize the veils that shroud God.”

— Honore de Balzac

“When law becomes despotic, morals are relaxed, and vice versa.”

— Honore de Balzac

“Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity. ”

— Honore de Balzac

“Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart”

— Honore de Balzac