The habits of life form the soul, and the soul forms the physical presence. — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
For certain people, misfortune is a beacon that lights up the dark and baser sides of social life. — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
“I shall still live on as a memory on your palette; that shall be life for me afterward.” — Honoré de Balzac Copy Share Image
“Cruelty and fear shake hands together. An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.” — Honoré de Balzac Copy Share Image
“Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can turn it into a fact.” — Honoré de Balzac Copy Share Image
The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
God is the poet; men are but the actors. The great dramas of earth were written in heaven. — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
When attempted self-destruction does not cure a man of life, it cures him of voluntary death. — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
There are moments in life when all we can bear is the sense that our friend is near us; our wounds would… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
“So often it happens that this one or that stands condemned by the social laws that govern family relations; and yet there… — Honoré de Balzac Copy Share Image
If those who are the enemies of innocent amusements had the direction of the world, they would take away the spring, and… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
The monotony of provincial life attracts the attention of people to the kitchen. You do not dine as luxuriously in the provinces… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
In the silence of their studios, busied for days at a time with works which leave the mind relatively free, painters become… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
“Soon this mass of ideas became harmonized, took life, seemed, as it were, to become a living individual and moved in the… — Honoré de Balzac Copy Share Image
If you are to judge a man, you must know his secret thoughts, sorrows, and feelings; to know merely the outward events… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
Virginity, like all monstrosities, possesses special riches and its own absorbing grandeur. Among the chaste, life forces are economized and thus gain… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
A penniless man who has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless wretch who… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
To stroll is a science, it is the gastronomy of the eye. To walk is to vegetate, to stroll is to live…… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
“for a woman knows the face of the man she loves like a sailor knows the open sea” — Honore De Balzac Copy Share Image
In intimate family life, there comes a moment when children, willingly or no, become the judges of their parents. — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
To feel, to love, to suffer, to devote herself, will always be the text of the life of woman. — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
One of the most detestable habits of Lilliputian minds is to find their own littleness in others. — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
And he, like many jaded people, had few pleasures left in life save good food and drink. — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
Life in clubs is no paltry sign of the times we live in. Here gentlemen gamble with others whom they would not… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
A mother's life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
She who is really a wife, one in heart, flesh, and bone, must follow wherever he leads, in whom her life, her… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
Poverty is a divine stepmother who does for youths what their own mothers were unable to do. It introduces them to frugality,… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
“Happy?" asked Aquilina, with dreadful look, and a smile full of pity and terror. "Ah, you do not know what it is… — Honoré de Balzac Copy Share Image
“What do we know of the world, of business, or men, or life? Our fathers should think for us!” — Honoré de Balzac Copy Share Image
The life of a man who deliberately runs through his fortune often becomes a business speculation; his friends, his pleasures, patrons, and… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
All human beings go through a previous life... Who knows how many fleshly forms the heir of heaven occupies before he can… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
“He will show you how, during the springtime of life, illusions, innocent hopes, silver threads of gossamer, descend from heaven and return… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
The events of human life, whether public or private, are so intimately linked to architecture that most observers can reconstruct nations or… — Honore de Balzac Copy Share Image
Sometimes, one gesture comprises an entire drama, the accent of one word ruins an entire existence, and the indifference of one glance… — 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
