Quotes from balzac honore de xxiv

Silliness has two ways of comporting itself; it talks, or is silent. Silent silliness can be borne.

There is a cure for temptation. What? Yielding to it.

In every case we receive only in proportion to what we give.

The Countess sat playing with her children. When she heard my name, she sprang up and came to meet me, then she sat down and pointed without a word to a chair by the fire. Her face wore the inscrutable mask beneath which women of the world conceal their most vehement emotions. Trouble had withered that face already. Nothing of its beauty now remained, save the marvelous outlines in which its principal charm had lain.

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

Glory is the sun of the dead.

A man is a poor creature compared to a woman.

The most natural feelings are those we are least willing to confess.

Let us leave hearts out of the question. Business is business, and business is not carried on with sentimentality like romances.

All that has to do with matters of material existence I leave to my wife.

Men are like that, they can resist sound argument, yet yield to a glance.