Quotes by Honore de Balzac

Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.

Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.

We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.

For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.

All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.

Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.

When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues.

There are some women whose pregnancy would make some sly bachelor smile.

The most virtuous women have something within them, something that is never chaste.

One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.

There is no such thing as a great talent without great will power.

Power is action the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.

Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.

I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race.

Finance, like time, devours its own children.

Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.

The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition.

But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.

Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.