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Honore de Balzac Quotes - Page 10

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Nothing is as heady as the wine of misfortune.

Nothing is as heady as the wine of misfortune.

Honore de Balzac
Wine, Misfortunes

Men are such dupes by choice, that he who would impose upon others never need be at a loss to find ready victims.

Honore de Balzac
Loss, Men, Choices

Glory and fame mean twelve thousand francs' worth of paid articles in the newspapers and five thousand crowns' worth of dinners.

Honore de Balzac
Mean, Twelve, Crowns

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.

Honore de Balzac
Beautiful, Strong, Powerful

[Raphael's] great superiority is due to the instinctive sense which, in him, seems to desire to shatter form. Form is, in his figures, what it is in ourselves, an interpreter for the communication of ideas and sensations, an exhaustless source of poetic inspiration. Every figure is a world in itself, a portrait of which the original appeared in a sublime vision, in a flood of light, pointed to by an inward voice, laid bare by a divine finger which showed what the sources of expression had been in the whole past life of the subject.

Honore de Balzac
Inspiration, Communication, Past

A woman's greatest charm consists in a constant appeal to a man's generosity by a gracious declaration of helplessness which fills him with pride and awakens the most magnificent feelings in his heart.

Honore de Balzac
Heart, Pride, Men

Noble passions are like vices: the more they are satisfied, the greater they grow, Mothers and gamblers are insatiable.

Honore de Balzac
Mother, Passion, Vices

Vulgar souls look hastily and superficially at the sea and accuse it of monotony; other more privileged beings could spend a lifetime admiring it and discovering new and changing phenomena that delight them. So it is with love.

Honore de Balzac
Love, Sea, Soul

Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.

Honore de Balzac
Kindness, Rocks, Hands
"A Daughter of Eve". Book by Honoré de Balzac, 1839.

The causes that govern the heart appear to be wholly alien to the results achieved. Are the forces that moved a desperate criminal the same that fill a martyr with pride, as both mount the scaffold?

Honore de Balzac
Heart, Pride, Criminals

Nature knows nothing but solid bodies; your science deals only with combinations of surfaces. And so nature constantly gives the lie to all your laws; can you name one to which no fact makes an exception?

Honore de Balzac
Lying, Law, Names
"Seraphita". Book by Honoré de Balzac, 1834.

It is as easy to dream a book as it is hard to write one.

Honore de Balzac
Dream, Book, Writing

Despotism accomplishes great things illegally; liberty doesn't even go to the trouble of accomplishing small things legally.

Honore de Balzac
Liberty, Trouble, Despotism

Envy lurks at the bottom of the human heart like a viper in its hole.

Honore de Balzac
Jealousy, Heart, Envy

Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.

Honore de Balzac
Paris, Doe, Good French

A country is strong which consists of wealthy families, every member of whom is interested in defending a common treasure; it is weak when composed of scattered individuals, to whom it matters little whether they obey seven or one, a Russian or a Corsican, so long as each keeps his own plot of land, blind in their wretched egotism, to the fact that the day is coming when this too will be torn from them.

Honore de Balzac
Family, Country, Strong
Honore de Balzac (2011). “Letters of Two Brides”, p.76, The Floating Press

The virtues we acquire, which develop slowly within us, are the invisible links that bind each one of our existences to the others - existences which the spirit alone remembers, for Matter has no memory for spiritual things.

Honore de Balzac
Karma, Spiritual, Memories
Honore de Balzac (2015). “Seraphita: Works of Balzac”, p.101, 谷月社

Little minds find satisfaction for their feelings, good or bad, in little things.

Honore de Balzac
Feel Good, Feelings, Mind
Honore de Balzac (1950). “Pere Goriot and Eugenie Grandet”

Above all do not ask that justice be just: It is just, because it is justice. The idea of a just justice could have originated only in the brain of an anarchist.

Honore de Balzac
Ideas, Justice, Brain

Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without esteem they cannot exist; esteem is the first demand that they make of love.

Honore de Balzac
Demand, Firsts, Should
Honore de Balzac (2011). “A Woman at Thirty”, p.122, The Floating Press

There are as many mediocrities exalted through pity as masters decried through envy.

Honore de Balzac
Envy, Mediocrity, Pity

Everything is bilateral in the domain of thought. Ideas are binary. Janus is the myth of criticism and the symbol of genius. Only God is triangular!

Honore de Balzac
Ideas, Criticism, Genius

The mind, too, has its regimen. It needs gymnastics, just like the body does.

Honore de Balzac
Gymnastics, Mind, Doe

Imaginative, sanguine men will never recognize that in negotiations the most dangerous moment of all is when everything is moving according to their wishes.

Honore de Balzac
Moving, Men, Wish

Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings. Virtue in Provence, in Constantinople, in London, and in Paris bears very different fruit, but is none the less virtue.

Honore de Balzac
Ideas, Paris, Pet
Honore de Balzac (2011). “Letters of Two Brides”, p.117, The Floating Press

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