Honoré de Balzac

Many men nourish a pride which urges them to conceal their struggles and show themselves only as conquerors.

— Honore de Balzac

Journalists grow accustomed to seeing evil and they let it pass; they proceed to approve it, and they end by committing it…

— Honore de Balzac

The man who enters his wife's dressing room is either a philosopher or a fool.

— Honore de Balzac

In intimate family life, there comes a moment when children, willingly or no, become the judges of their parents.

— Honore de Balzac

If the human heart sometimes finds moments of pause as it ascends the slopes of affection, it rarely halts on the way…

— 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

When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for…

— Honore de Balzac

Only when one has learned to acknowledge that wiser minds have made better words to come out of our mouths may we…

— Honore de Balzac

For businessmen, the world is a bale of banknotes in circulation; for most young men, it is a woman; for some women,…

— Honore de Balzac

“A man like you is a god, not just a machine covered with skin, but a theater where fine feelings sprout and…

— Honoré de Balzac

When she lives at his palace, the maiden niece of a bishop can pass for a respectable woman because, if she has…

— Honore de Balzac

To forget is the great secret of strong creative natures; to forget is the way nature herself who knows no past and…

— Honore de Balzac

The pleasures of love proceed successively from a distich to a quatrain, from a quatrain to a sonnet, from a sonnet to…

— Honore de Balzac

Nothing can afford a woman greater pleasure than to hear tender words of love. The strictest, most devout woman will listen even…

— Honore de Balzac

When tempted to be unfaithful, the intellectual woman will try to inspire her husband with indifference, the sentimental woman with hatred, and…

— Honore de Balzac

Vulgar souls look hastily and superficially at the sea and accuse it of monotony; other more privileged beings could spend a lifetime…

— Honore de Balzac

Most women wish to feel that their spirit has been violated. Do they not, indeed, flatter themselves on never yielding save to…

— Honore de Balzac

“Happiness is the inner poetry of women, just as fine clothes are the mask of beauty”

— Honoré de Balzac

In France we can cauterize wounds but we do not yet know any remedy for the injuries inflicted by a bon mot.

— Honore de Balzac

Squeeze marriage as much as you like, you will never extract anything from it but fun for bachelors and boredom for husbands.

— Honore de Balzac

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

— Honore de Balzac

When attempted self-destruction does not cure a man of life, it cures him of voluntary death.

— Honore de Balzac

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

— Honore De Balzac

Discouragement is of all ages: In youth it is a presentiment, in old age a remembrance.

— Honore de Balzac

“What place indeed is there in the shallow petty frivolous thing called society for noble thoughts and feelings?”

— Honoré de Balzac

Happiness lends poetic charms to woman, and dress adorns her like a delicate tinge of rouge.

— Honore de Balzac

Courage is the fire that burns in the cold,dark room of fear and doubt that we live in.

— Honore De Balzac

My further advice on your relations to women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, "Serve all, love one.

— Honore de Balzac

A woman's sentimental monkeyshines will always deceive her lover, who invariably waxes ecstatic where her husband necessarily shrugs his shoulders.

— Honore de Balzac

France is a country that loves to change their government if it is always the same.

— Honore de Balzac

For a sick man the world begins at his pillow and ends at the foot of his bed.

— Honore de Balzac

Paris, like every pretty woman, is subject to inexplicable whims of beauty and ugliness.

— Honore de Balzac

Does anyone know where these gondolas of Paris come from? [Fr., Ne sait on pas ou viennent ces gondoles Parisiennes?]

— Honore de Balzac

In love, what a woman mistakes for disgust is actually clearsightedness. If she does not admire a man, she scorns him.

— Honore de Balzac

During the great storms of our lives we imitate those captains who jettison their weightiest cargo.

— Honore de Balzac

You're a fine fastidious young man, as proud as a lion, as gentle as a girl. You'd make a good catch for…

— Honore de Balzac

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

— Honore de Balzac

Love endows us with a sort of personal religion; we respect another live within ourselves.

— Honore de Balzac

Give to a wounded heart seclusion; consolation nor reason ever effected anything in such a case.

— Honore de Balzac

“Instead of inspiring the gallant attentions which other women seek, she made men dream,”

— Honoré de Balzac