Quotes by Honoré de Balzac

Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness.

Lucien took the cigar and lit it, in the Spanish fashion, from that of the priest. He is right, Lucien thought; there is plenty of time to kill myself.

For avarice begins where poverty ends.

The human heart may find here and there a resting-place short of the highest height of affection, but we seldom stop in the steep, downward slope of hatred.

Man cannot spend all his time doing evil, and even in the company of pirates there must be some sweet moments on their sinister ship when you feel as if you were aboard a pleasure yacht.

No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.

Man can start with aversion and end with love, but if he begins with love and comes round to aversion he will never get back to love.

Such is life. It is no cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands; the real art is in getting them clean again, and therein lies the whole morality of our epoch.

In Paris, when certain people see you ready to set your foot in the stirrup, some pull your coat-tails, others loosen the buckle of the strap that you may fall and crack your skull; one wrenches off your horses shoes, another steals your whip, and the least treacherous of them all is the man whom you see coming to fire his pistol at you point blank.

No one was irritable; we have never known anyone to remain unhappy while digesting a good meal. We enjoy lingering in a becalmed state, a kind of midpoint between the reverie of a thinker and the contentment of a cud-chewing animal, a state that should be termed the physical melancholy of gastronomy.

Hortense was a wife; Valerie a mistress.Many men desire to have these two editions of the same work, although it is proof of deep inferiority in a man if he cannot make his wife his mistress. Seeking variety is a sign of impotence.

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

Though the human heart may have to pause for rest when climbing the heights of affection it rarely stops on the slippery slope of hatred.

Of necessity she went further in aversion than she had gone in love, for her hatred was not in proportion to her love but to her disappointed hopes.

So, my dear fellow, if I dont believe in God, I believe still less in man.

If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.

He hesitated till the last moment, but finally dropped them in the box, saying, I shall win!--the cry of a gambler, the cry of the great general, the compulsive cry that has ruined more men than it has ever saved.

If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemys trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one ... he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent.

He became...the ideal of that virtue which delights in its own work...doing everything with simplicity and dignity, for he seemed to realize that his objective added nobility to everything he did.

Here comes Mamma Vauquerr, fair as a starrr; and strung up like a bunch of carrots. Arent we suffocating ourselves a wee bit? he asked, placing a hand on the top of her corset. A bit of a crush in the vestibule, here, Mamma! If we start crying, therell be an explosion. Never mind, Ill be there to collect the bits--just like an antiquary.Now, theres the language of true French gallantry, murmured Madame Vauquer in an aside to Madame Couture.