Inspirational Quotes by Honoré de Balzac

You may imitate, but never counterfeit.

— Honore de Balzac

We love because we love.

— Honore de Balzac

Novelty is both delightful and deceptive.

— Honore de Balzac

Necessity is often the spur to genius.

— Honore de Balzac

Sects differ more in name than tenets.

— Honore de Balzac

As a rule, only the poor are generous.

— Honore de Balzac

Hope is a light diet, but very stimulating.

— Honore de Balzac

The more you judge, the less you love.

— Honore de Balzac

The glutton is much more than an animal and much less than a man.

— Honore de Balzac

Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true.

— Honore de Balzac

A woman must be a genius to create a good husband.

— Honore de Balzac

We cannot confront solitude without moral resources.

— Honore de Balzac

Are not our noblest feelings as it were the poems of our will.

— Honore de Balzac

There is nothing original; all is reflected light.

— Honore de Balzac

There is a cure for temptation. What? Yielding to it.

— Honore de Balzac

A sacrament by virtue of which each imparts nothing but vexations to the other.

— Honore de Balzac

Nowhere but in France are people so strictly observant of great matters and so disdainfully indulgent about small ones.

— Honore de Balzac

Un mari, comme un gouvernement, ne doit jamais avouer de faute. A husband, like a government, never needs to admit a fault.

— Honore de Balzac

He has great tranquility of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men.

— Honore de Balzac

People exaggerate both happiness and unhappiness; we are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people say we are.

— Honore de Balzac

Nos beaux sentiments ne sont-ils pas les poe sies de la volonte ? Aren't our best feelings poetry of the will?

— Honore de Balzac

La femme marie e est un esclave qu'il faut savoir mettre sur un tro" n e. A married woman is a slave…

— Honore de Balzac

Le bonheur engloutit nos forces, comme le malheur e teint nos vertus. Happiness engulfs our strength, just as misfortune extinguishes our virtues.

— Honore de Balzac

Le coeur d'une me' re est un ab|"me au fond duquel se trouve toujours un pardon. A mother'sheart isanabyss atthebottomof whichthere is…

— Honore de Balzac

Nature knows nothing but solid bodies; your science deals only with combinations of surfaces. And so nature constantly gives the lie to…

— Honore de Balzac

A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry…

— Honore de Balzac

A lui la foi, a' elle le doute, a' elle le fardeau le plus lourd: la femme ne souffre-t-elle pas toujours pour…

— Honore de Balzac

Beaucoup d'hommes ont un orgueil qui les pousse a' cacher leurs combats et a' ne se montrer que victorieux. Many men have…

— Honore de Balzac

Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them,…

— Honore de Balzac

To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals - that is what keeps…

— Honore de Balzac

All we are is in the soul.

— Honore de Balzac

Hatred like love feeds on the merest trifles.

— Honore de Balzac

Vice is perhaps a desire to learn everything.

— Honore de Balzac

Love is the most melodious of all harmonies.

— Honore de Balzac

Clouds signify the veil of the Most High.

— Honore de Balzac

Life cannot go on without much forgetting.

— Honore de Balzac

To be happy, a man must love his wife as she chooses to be loved.

— Honore de Balzac

Believe everything you hear said of the world; nothing is too impossibly bad.

— Honore de Balzac

What is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood?

— Honore de Balzac

We are never either so wretched or so happy as we say we are.

— Honore de Balzac