Honoré de Balzac Quotes - Page 2

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.

Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.

Glory is the sunshine of the dead

Cruelty and fear shake hands together. An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.

Ah! What pleasure it must be to a woman to suffer for the one she loves!

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.

Necessity is often the spur to genius.

All happiness depends on courage and work. I have had many periods of wretchedness but with energy and above all with illusions I pulled through them all.

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.

Our worst misfortunes never happen and most miseries lie in anticipation.

It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.

Alas! Where love is concerned, self-interested deception is superior to the truth itself, which is why so many men pay so high a price to clever deceivers.

Some day you will find out that there is far more happiness in another's happiness than in your own.

Вера в себя способна творить такие же чудеса, как вера в Господа Бога.

What moralists describe as the mysteries of the human heart are solely the deceiving thoughts, the spontaneous impulses of self-regard. The sudden changes in character, about which so much has been said, are instinctive calculations for the furtherance of our own pleasures. Seeing himself now in his fine clothes, his new gloves and shoes, Eugène de Rastignac forgot his noble resolve. Youth, when it swerves toward wrong, dares not look in the mirror of conscience; maturity has already seen itself there. That is the whole difference between the two phases of life.

Where some one else's welfare is concerned, a young girl becomes as ingenious as a thief. Guileless where she herself is in question, and full of foresight for me,--she is like a heavenly angel forgiving the strange incomprehensible sins of earth.

All happiness depends on courage and work.

Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine.

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.

Virtue will cut your head off, vice will only cut your hair.

If the human heart sometimes finds moments of pause as it ascends the slopes of affection, it rarely halts on the way down.

Envy is the most stupid of vices for there is no single advantage to be gained from it.

No one ought even to desert a woman after throwing her a heap of gold in her distress! He ought to love her forever! You are young, only twenty-one, and kind and upright and fine. You'll ask me how a woman can take money from a man. Oh, God, isn't it natural to share everything with the one we owe all our happiness to? When one has given everything, how can one quibble about a mere portion of it? Money is important only when feeling has ceased. Isn't one bound for life? How can you foresee separation when you think someone loves you? When a man swears eternal love--how can there be any separate concerns in that case?

The viscountess had raised the forefinger of her right hand and made a pretty gesture toward a stool at her feet. There was such intense tyrannical passion in the gesture that the marquis relinquished the doorknob and came back.

A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.

Hope is a light diet but very stimulating.

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

How did you get back?' asked Vautrin. 'I walked,' replied Eugene.'I wouldn't like half-pleasures, myself,' observed the tempter. 'I'd want to go there in my own carriage, have my own box, and come back in comfort. All or nothing, that's my motto.''And a very good one,' said Madame Vauquer.

We flew back home like swallows. 'Is it happiness that makes us so light?' Agathe asked.

So, my dear fellow, if I don't believe in God, I believe still less in man.

However gross a man may be, the minute he expresses a strong and genuine affection, some inner secretion alters his features, animates his gestures, and colors his voice. The stupidest man will often, under the stress of passion, achieve heights of eloquence, in thought if not in language, and seem to move in some luminous sphere. Goriot's voice and gesture had at this moment the power of communication that characterizes the great actor. Are not our finer feelings the poems of the human will?

First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint the second time.

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.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

There are no principles; there are only events. There is no good and bad, there are only circumstances. The superior man espouses events and circumstances in order to guide them. If there were principles and fixed laws, nations would not change them as we change our shirts and a man can not be expected to be wiser than an entire nation.