Quotes from Honore de Balzac

The fact is that love is of two kinds, one which commands, and one which obeys. The two are quite distinct, and the passion to which the one gives rise is not the passion of the other.

Aucun homme n'a pu découvrir le moyen de donner un conseil d'ami à aucune femme, pas même à la sienne.

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

You may imitate, but never counterfeit.

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

The more one judges, the less one loves.

All happiness depends on courage and work.

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.

Women are always true, even in the midst of their greatest falsities, because they are always influenced by some natural feeling.

Every moment of happiness requires a great amount of Ignorance

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

I'm a great poet. I don't put my poems on paper: they consist of actions and feelings.

A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of the speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the richest treasures of love.

Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?

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.

Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.

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

Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt.

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?

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

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

Such is life. It is no cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands; the real art is in getting them clean again, and therein lies the whole morality of our epoch.

When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues.

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