Honore de Balzac Quotes About Human Nature

Quotes about: Human Nature

• For pain is perhaps but a violent pleasure? Who could determine the point where pleasure becomes pain, where pain is still a pleasure? Is not the utmost brightness of the ideal world soothing to us, while the lightest shadows of the physical world annoy?

  Honore de Balzac

  Pain, Shadow, World

  Honore de Balzac (2011). “The Magic Skin: Or The Wild Ass's Skin”, p.39, The Floating Press

• 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.

  Honore de Balzac

  Humility, Anti Bullying, Suffering

  Honore de Balzac, Pierre F. Limouzy (1999). “CliffsNotes on Balzac's Pere Goriot”, p.7, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Love is like some fresh spring, first a stream and then a river, changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation.

  Honore de Balzac

  Love, Spring, Ocean

  Honore de Balzac (2011). “The Magic Skin: Or The Wild Ass's Skin”, p.121, The Floating Press

• But does not happiness come from the soul within?

  Honore de Balzac

  Happiness, Soul, Doe

  Honore de Balzac (2011). “The Magic Skin: Or The Wild Ass's Skin”, p.76, The Floating Press

• Women, perhaps even require a little hypocrisy.

  Honore de Balzac

  Women, Hypocrisy, Littles

  Honore de Balzac (2011). “The Magic Skin: Or The Wild Ass's Skin”, p.94, The Floating Press

• Virtue in women is perhaps a question of temperament.

  Honore de Balzac

  Women, Human Nature, Virtue

  Honore de Balzac (2014). “Analytical Studies: Physiology of Marriage and Petty Troubles of Married Life”, p.67, The Floating Press

• A penniless man who has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless wretch who is in love no longer belongs to himself, and may not take his own life. Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes; it is the life of another that we revere within us; then and so begins for us the cruelest trouble of all.

  Honore de Balzac

  Love, Eye, Men

  Honore de Balzac (2011). “The Magic Skin: Or The Wild Ass's Skin”, p.134, The Floating Press

• Ideas devour the ages as men are devoured by their passions. When man is cured, human nature will cure itself perhaps.

  Honore de Balzac

  Passion, Men, Ideas

• Ambitious men spend their youth in rendering themselves worthy of patronage; it is their great mistake. While the foolish creatures are laying in stores of knowledge and energy, so that they shall not sink under the weight of responsible posts that recede from them, schemers come and go who are wealthy in words and destitute of ideas, astonish the ignorant, and creep into the confidence of those who have a little knowledge.

  Honore de Balzac

  Success, Mistake, Ambition

  Honore de Balzac (2011). “The Magic Skin: Or The Wild Ass's Skin”, p.99, The Floating Press

• We have long struggles with ourself, of which the outcome is one of our actions; they are, as it were, the inner side of human nature. This inner side is God's; the outer side belongs to men.

  Honore de Balzac

  Struggle, Men, Long

  "Seraphita". Book by Honoré de Balzac, 1835.

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