Virtue is not a thing you can have by halves; it is or it is not. — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
Virtue is always too much of a piece and too ignorant of those shades of feeling and of temperament that enable us… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
Nothing is so discreet as a young face, for nothing is less mobile; it has the serenity, the surface smoothness, and the… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
Ah! how much a mother learns from her child! The constant protection of a helpless being forces us to so strict an… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
“Hortense was a wife; Valerie a mistress. Many men desire to have these two editions of the same work, although it is… — Honoré de Balzac Copy Share Image
Self-love is as protective as the Deity; Disenchantment is as perspicacious as a surgeon; Experience is as provident as a mother. Such… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings. Virtue in Provence, in Constantinople, in London, and… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
Everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages.… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
“To that point, he had always found the vicomtesse overflowing with friendly politeness, that sweet-flowing grace conferred by an aristocratic education, and… — Honoré de Balzac Copy Share Image
Women are as they are; they necessarily have the defects of their virtues. — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
Love and work have the virtues of making a man pretty indifferent to anything else. — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
Innocence alone dares commit certain acts of audacity. Virtue, when tutored, is as calculating as vice. — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
How sternly we reproach virtue for its failings, how indulgent we are to the better qualities of vice! — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
Kindness steers no easy course. Attributing it to character, we seldom recognize the secret efforts of a noble heart, whereas we reward… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
The virtues we acquire, which develop slowly within us, are the invisible links that bind each one of our existences to the… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
Like most young people, these two attributed to the world their own intelligence and virtues. Youth who knows no failure has no… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
Alas, two men are often necessary to provide a woman with a perfect lover, just as in literature a writer composes a… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
On the moral plane, true friends enjoy the same protection as the sense of smell confers upon dogs. They scent the sorrow… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
What moralists describe as the mysteries of the human heart are solely the deceiving thoughts, the spontaneous impulses of self-regard. The sudden… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
“Oh, my friend, when you love, love a woman whom you are sure that you can love always. Never forsake a woman.” — Honoré de Balzac Copy Share Image
“You have broken the ice, though you have not even scratched its glossy surface: you have placed your hand upon the croup of the… — Honoré de Balzac Copy Share Image
It is quite right what they say: the three most beautiful sights in the world are a ship in full sail, a galloping horse,… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
My writing table has seen all my wretchedness, knows all my plans, has overheard all my thoughts. — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
Foppery, being the chronic condition of women, is not so much noticed as it is when it breaks out on the person of the… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
A married woman is a slave you must know how to seat upon a throne. — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
Rich men are resolved to be astonished at nothing. When they see a masterpiece, they must needs at one glance recognize some flaw to… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
One can imagine the look the two lovers exchanged; it was like a flame, for virtuous lovers have not a shred of hypocrisy. — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
White and shining virgin of all human virtues, ark of the covenant between earth and heaven, tender and strong companion partaking of the lion… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
All men can bear a familiar, definite misfortune better than the cruel alternations of a fate which, from one moment to another, brings excessive… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
![“To that point, he had always found the vicomtesse overflowing with friendly politeness, that sweet-flowing grace conferred by an aristocratic education, and which is never truly there unless it comes, automatically and unthinkingly, straight from the heart. [...] For anyone who had learned the…” quote by Honoré de Balzac](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/f54/honor-de-balzac-197_beneficience_to-that-point-he-had-always-found-the-vi_794774.jpg)
