Quotes from Honore de Balzac

The word 'love, ' used in connection with the reproduction of our species, is the most odious blasphemy taught in our times.

There are moments in life when all that we can bear is the sense that our friend is near us; our wounds would wince at consoling words that would reveal the depths of our pain.

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

In Paris every man must have had a love affair. What woman wants something that no other woman ever wanted.

Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.

The habits of life form the soul, and the soul forms the countenance.

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

To provoke laughter without joining in it greatly heightens the effect.

Modesty is the conscience of the body.

Necessity is often the spur to genius.

A mother who is really a mother is never free.

We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never either so wretched or so happy as we say we are.

Believe everything you hear said of the world; nothing is too impossibly bad.

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

A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over.

The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.

The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.

A woman must be a genius to create a good husband.

To have one's mother-in-law in the country when one lives in Paris, and vice versa, is one of those strokes of luck that one encounters only too rarely.

Marriage must perforce fight against the all-devouring monster of habit.

Among even the happiest married couples there are always moments of regret.

In the medical profession a horse and carriage are more necessary than any scientific knowledge.

Like hunger, physical love is a necessity. But man's appetite for amour is never so regular or so sustained as his appetite for the delights of the table.

In Paris, the greatest expression of personal satisfaction known to man is the smirk on the face of a male, highly pleased with himself as he leaves the boudoir of a lady.