Honoré de Balzac

“Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?”

“This coffee falls into your stomach, and straightway there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army on the battlefield, and the battle takes place. Things remembered arrive at full gallop, ensign to the wind. The light cavalry of comparisons deliver a magnificent deploying charge, the artillery of logic hurry up with their train and ammunition, the shafts of wit start up like sharpshooters. Similes arise, the paper is covered with ink; for the struggle commences and is concluded with torrents of black water, just as a battle with powder.”

“First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint a second time.”

“Love is a game in which one always cheats.”

“Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu’il a été proprement fait.”

“Misfortune is a stepping stone for genius, the baptismal font of Christians, treasure for the skillful man, an abyss for the feeble.”

“For avarice begins where poverty ends.”

“While seeking out the dead, I see nothing but the living.”

“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.”

“for a woman knows the face of the man she loves like a sailor knows the open sea”

“There is no such thing as a great talent without great willpower.”

“Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.”

“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”

“I yield to your wishes. It is the privilege of the women whom we love more than they love us to make the men who love them ignore the ordinary rules of common-sense.”

“-Хүү минь, чи надад ямар ч өргүй гэж бодож явах эрхийг би чамд олголоо.”

“Il ya toute une vie dans une heure d'amour.”

“Ah! Comme une existence peut devenir orageuse entre les quatre murs d'une mansarde! L'ame umaine est une fée, elle métamorphose une paille en diamants; sous sa bageutte les palais anchantés éclosent comme les fleurs des champs sous les chauds inspirations du soleil.”

“Un homme sans passion e sans argent reste maitre de sa personne; mais un maleureux qui aime ne s'appartient plus et ne peut pas se tuer. L'amour nous donne une sorte de religion pour nous-meme, nous respectons en nous une autre vie, il devient alors le plus horibble des malheures avec une espérance, une espérance qui vous fait accepter des tortures”

“Hélas! Nous ne manquons jamais d'argent pour nos caprices, nous ne discutons que le prix des choses utiles ou nécessaires; nous jetons l'or avec insouciance à des danseuses, et nous marchandons un ouvrier dont la famille affamée attend la paiement d'un mémoire. Combien de gens ont un habit de cent francs, un diamant à la pomme de leur canne, et dinent à vingt-cinque sous? Il semble que nous n'achetions jamais assez chèrementles plaisirs de la vanité”

“Marriage must fight constantly against a monster which devours everything: routine.”

“Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.”

“The more he saw, the more he doubted. He watched men narrowly, and saw how, beneath the surface, courage was often rashness; and prudence, cowardice; generosity, a clever piece of calculation; justice, a wrong; delicacy, pusillanimity; honesty, a modus vivendi; and by some strange dispensation of fate, he must see that those who at heart were really honest, scrupulous, just, generous, prudent or brave were held cheaply by their fellow-men. ‘What a cold-blooded jest!’ said he to himself. ‘It was not devised by a God.’ From that time forth he renounced a better world, and never uncovered himself when a Name was pronounced, and for him the carven saints in the churches became works of art”

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

“Reading brings us unknown friends”

“There are men who put the weight of a coffin into their deliberations as they bargain for Cashmere shawls for their wives, as they go up the staircase of a theatre, or think of going to the Bouffons, or of setting up a carriage; who are murderers in thought when dear ones, with the irresistable charm of innocence, hold up childish foreheads to be kissed with a ‘Good-night, father!’ Hourly they meet the gaze of eyes they would fain close forever, eyes that still open each morning to the light. . . God alone knows the number of those who are parricides in thought”

“A murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his vileness pervades every moment of his life”

“Notre conscience est un juge infaillible, quand nous ne l'avons pas encore assassinée.”

“Glory is the sunshine of the dead”

“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.”

“Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.”

“Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.”

“The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.”

“An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.”

“Young man,' Porbus said, seeing Poussin stare open-mouthed at a picture, 'Don't look at the canvas too long, it will drive you to despair.”

“Yes,' Montriveau went on in an unsteady voice, 'this Catholic faith to which you wish to convert me is a lie that men make for themselves; hope is a lie at the expense of the future; pride, a lie between us and our fellows; and pity, and prudence, and terror are cunning lies. And now my happiness is to be one more lying delusion; I am expected to delude myself, to be willing to give gold coin for silver to the end. If you can so easily dispense with my visits; if you confess me neither as your friend nor your love, you do not care for me! And I, poor fool that I am, tell myself this, and know it, and love you!”

“Passion is univeral humanity. Without it religion history art and romance would be useless.”

“All happiness depends on courage and work.”

“Holding this book in your hand, sinking back in your soft armchair, you will say to yourself: perhaps it will amuse me. And after you have read this story of great misfortunes, you will no doubt dine well, blaming the author for your own insensitivity, accusing him of wild exaggeration and flights of fancy. But rest assured: this tragedy is not a fiction. All is true.”

“Every moment of happiness requires a great amount of Ignorance”

“The more one judges, the less one loves.”

“Passion is born deaf and dumb.”

“With monuments as with men, position means everything.”

“Life is simply what out feelings do to us.”

“The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness”

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

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

“I am a galley slave to pen and ink.”