Short Quotes - Author Honore de Balzac Showing 1 - 48 of 104 Add Quote Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without esteem they cannot exist; esteem is the first demand that they make of love. Honore de Balzac Love Upvote0 Wisdom is that apprehension of heavenly things to which the spirit rises through love. Honore de Balzac Love Upvote0 It is easy to sit up and take notice, What is difficult is getting up and taking action. Honore de Balzac Action Upvote0 It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time. Honore de Balzac Time Upvote0 It is as absurd to say that a man can't love one woman all the time as it is to say that a violinist needs several violins to play the same piece of music. Honore de Balzac Love Upvote0 In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls. Honore de Balzac Pearls Upvote0 If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye. Honore de Balzac Eye Upvote0 If those who are the enemies of innocent amusements had the direction of the world, they would take away the spring, and youth, the former from the year, the latter from human life. Honore de Balzac Life Upvote0 Ideas devour the ages as men are devoured by their passions. When man is cured, human nature will cure itself perhaps. Honore de Balzac Men Upvote0 Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane. Honore de Balzac Love Upvote0 First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint the second time. Honore de Balzac Love Upvote0 It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment. Honore de Balzac Act Upvote0 Lovers have a way of using this word, nothing, which implies exactly the opposite. Honore de Balzac Lovers Upvote0 Finance, like time, devours its own children. Honore de Balzac Finance Upvote0 It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants. Honore de Balzac Calculations Upvote0 It would be curious to know what leads a man to become a stationer rather than a baker, when he is no longer compelled, as among the Egyptians, to succeed to his father's craft. Honore de Balzac Father Upvote0 Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught. Honore de Balzac Flies Upvote0 Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside. Honore de Balzac Love Upvote0 Love is a game in which one always cheats. Honore de Balzac Love Upvote0 Love is the poetry of the senses. Honore de Balzac Love Upvote0 Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow. Honore de Balzac Excess Upvote0 Love or hatred must constantly increase between two persons who are always together; every moment fresh reasons are found for loving or hating better. Honore de Balzac Love Upvote0 Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies. Honore de Balzac Bureaucracy Upvote0 Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation. Honore de Balzac Hypocrisy Upvote0 Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love. Honore de Balzac Love Upvote0 Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity. Honore de Balzac Marriage Upvote0 Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity. Honore de Balzac Love Upvote0 At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist; there can only be promise of the coming woman. Honore de Balzac Beauty Upvote0 A flow of words is a sure sign of duplicity. Honore de Balzac Words Upvote0 A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning. Honore de Balzac HusbFirst Upvote0 A grocer is attracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the repulsion which renders it odious to artists. Honore de Balzac Business Upvote0 A husband who submits to his wife's yoke is justly held an object of ridicule. A woman's influence ought to be entirely concealed. Honore de Balzac Wife Upvote0 A lover always thinks of his mistress first and himself second; with a husband it runs the other way. Honore de Balzac HusbFirst Upvote0 A man is a poor creature compared to a woman. Honore de Balzac Man Upvote0 A mother who is really a mother is never free. Honore de Balzac Mother Upvote0 A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories. Honore de Balzac Happiness Upvote0 A mother's life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears. Honore de Balzac Life Upvote0 A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea. Honore de Balzac Man Upvote0 A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over. Honore de Balzac Wife Upvote0 Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing. Honore de Balzac Chance Upvote0 An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence. Honore de Balzac Existence Upvote0 Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact. Honore de Balzac Equality Upvote0 Behind every great fortune lies a great crime. Honore de Balzac Crime Upvote0 Between the daylight gambler and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady's window. Honore de Balzac HusbDifference Upvote0 I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race. Honore de Balzac Race Upvote0 But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite. Honore de Balzac Positive Upvote0 Men die in despair, while spirits die in ecstasy. Honore de Balzac Men Upvote0 Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty. Honore de Balzac Beauty Upvote0