Honore de Balzac Quotes - Page 25

Quotes about:

• Political liberty, the peace of a nation, and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a heavy tax in blood!

  Honore de Balzac

  Fate, Blood, Political

  7 Copy quote

• A grass blade believes that men build palaces for it to grow in. Grass wedges its way between the closest blocks of marble and it brings them down. This power of feeble life which can creep in anywhere is greater than that of the mighty behind their cannons.

  Honore de Balzac

  Block, Believe, Men

  8 Copy quote

• My writing table has seen all my wretchedness, knows all my plans, has overheard all my thoughts.

  Honore de Balzac

  Writing, Tables, My Thoughts

  4 Copy quote

• Does anyone know where these gondolas of Paris come from?
  [Fr., Ne sait on pas ou viennent ces gondoles Parisiennes?]

  Honore de Balzac

  Paris, Doe, Gondolas

  16 Copy quote

• You're a fine fastidious young man, as proud as a lion, as gentle as a girl. You'd make a good catch for the devil.

  Honore de Balzac

  Girl, Men, Devil

  4 Copy quote

• The monotony of provincial life attracts the attention of people to the kitchen. You do not dine as luxuriously in the provinces as in Paris, but you dine better, because the dishes serve you are the result of mediation and study.

  Honore de Balzac

  Paris, People, Kitchen

  4 Copy quote

• Thought is a key to all treasures; the miser's gains are ours without his cares. Thus I have soared above this world, where my enjoyments have been intellectual joys.

  Honore de Balzac

  Keys, Joy, Intellectual

  "The Wild Ass's Skin". Book by Honoré de Balzac, 1831.

  8 Copy quote

• Though your vulgarian does not readily admit that feelings can change overnight, certainly two lovers often part far more abruptly than they came together.

  Honore de Balzac

  Love, Two, Feelings

  4 Copy quote

• Now literary success can only be won in solitude by persevering labor.

  Honore de Balzac

  Solitude, Labor

  4 Copy quote

• 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?

  Honore de Balzac

  Strong, Stress, Moving

  4 Copy quote

• If we study Nature attentively in its great evolutions as in its minutest works, we cannot fail to recognize the possibility of enchantment - giving to that word its exact significance.

  Honore de Balzac

  Nature, Giving, Enchantment

  Honore de Balzac (2015). “Seraphita: Works of Balzac”, p.29, 谷月社

  4 Copy quote

• A beautiful book is a victory won in all the battlefields of human thought.

  Honore de Balzac

  Beautiful, Book, Victory

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• No woman has ever existed who did not know perfectly well in her heart what to expect from the superiority or inferiority of a rival.

  Honore de Balzac

  Heart, Inferiority, Rivals

  4 Copy quote

• Modern reformers offer nebulous theories or write philanthropic novels. But your thief acts! He is as clear as a fact and as logical as a punch on the nose! And what a style he has!

  Honore de Balzac

  Writing, Style, Thieves

  4 Copy quote

• A woman in the depths of despair proves so persuasive that she wrenches the forgiveness lurking deep in the heart of her lover. This is all the more true when that woman is young, pretty, and so decollete as to emerge from the neck of her gown in the costume of Eve.

  Honore de Balzac

  Heart, Despair, Costumes

  4 Copy quote

• When she lives at his palace, the maiden niece of a bishop can pass for a respectable woman because, if she has a love affair, she is obliged to hoodwink her uncle.

  Honore de Balzac

  Uncles, Niece, Palaces

  4 Copy quote

• Your women of fashion ceases to be a woman. She is neither mother, nor wife, nor lover. She is, medically speaking, sex on the brain.

  Honore de Balzac

  Mother, Fashion, Sex

  4 Copy quote

• A careful observation of Nature will disclose pleasantries of superb irony. She has for instance placed toads close to flowers.

  Honore de Balzac

  Nature, Flower, Toads

  7 Copy quote

• There are houses in certain provincial towns whose aspect inspires melancholy, akin to that called forth by sombre cloisters, dreary moorlands, or the desolation of ruins. Within these houses there is, perhaps, the silence of the cloister, the barrenness of moors, the skeleton of ruins; life and movement are so stagnant there that a stranger might think them uninhabited, were it not that he encounters suddenly the pale, cold glance of a motionless person, whose half-monastic face peers beyond the window-casing at the sound of an unaccustomed step.

  Honore de Balzac

  Book, Thinking, Skeletons

  Honore de Balzac (2009). “Eugenie Grandet”, p.5, The Floating Press

  4 Copy quote

• One day, about the middle of July 1838, one of the carriages, lately introduced to Paris cabstands, and known as Milords, was driving down the Rue de l'Universite, conveying a stout man of middle height in the uniform of a captain of the National Guard.

  Honore de Balzac

  Book, Men, July

  Honore de Balzac (1901). “Cousin Betty”, p.8, Library of Alexandria

  5 Copy quote

• What moralist can deny that well-bred and vicious people are much more agreeable than their virtuous counterparts? Having crimes to atone for, they provisionally solicit indulgence by showing leniency toward the defects of their judges. Thus they pass for excellent folk.

  Honore de Balzac

  People, Judging, Crime

  4 Copy quote

• Charity is not one of the virtues practiced on the stock market. The heart of a bank is but one of many viscera.

  Honore de Balzac

  Heart, Charity, Virtue

  4 Copy quote

• No frozen-hearted woman ever I laid eyes on but has made duty her religion.

  Honore de Balzac

  Eye, Frozen, Made

  4 Copy quote

• We must have books for recreation and entertainment, as well as books for instruction and for business; the former are agreeable, the latter useful, and the human mind requires both. The cannon law and the codes of Justinian shall have due honor, and reign at the universities; but Homer and Virgil need not therefore be banished. We will cultivate the olive and the vine, but without eradicating the myrtle and the rose.

  Honore de Balzac

  Book, Law, Rose

  6 Copy quote

Page 25 of 27

First

← Prev

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin