Quotes from Honore de Balzac

There is one thing remarkable about women: they never reason about their blameworthy actions,—feeling carries them off their feet; even in their dissimulation there is an element of sincerity; and in women alone crime may exist without baseness, for it often happens that they do not know how it came about that they committed it.

We have within us an inward power of sight, an eye of the soul which foresees catastrophes; and the repugnance that comes over us against the fateful being is the result of that foresight. Though religion orders us to conquer it, distrust remains, and its voice is forever heard.

Where was I to get a messenger who could carry my few chattels and my books? How could I pay him and the porter? Where was I to go? I repeated these unanswerable questions again and again, in tears, as madmen repeat their tunes. I fell asleep; poverty has for its friends heavenly slumbers full of beautiful dreams.

It is not hope, but despair, which gives the measure of our ambitions. The finest poems of hope are sung in secret, but grief appears without a veil.

Tive agora a noção do que é ser pobre, ao desejar ter fortuna para dar ao meu filho

I had lost myself in a romance a la Radcliffe, constructed on the juridical base given me by Monsieur Regnault, when the door, opened by a woman's cautious hand, turned on the hinges. I saw my landlady come in, a buxom, florid dame, always good-humored, who had missed her calling in life.

But how explain the perennial vigor of envy? — a vice that brings nothing in!

Then, as we desire all the more violently the things we find difficult to obtain, he continued to adore women with that ingenuous tenderness and feline delicacy the secret of which belongs to women themselves, who may, perhaps, prefer to keep the monopoly of it. In point of fact, though women of the world complain of the way men love them, they have little liking themselves for those whose soul is half feminine.

At each sentence my hostess put her head forward, looking at me with an innkeeper's keen scrutiny, a happy compromise between the instinct of a police constable, the astuteness of a spy, and the cunning of a dealer.

Dac? inima omeneasc? afl? clipe de r?gaz în timp ce urc? pe culmile afec?iunii,rareori se opre?te pe povîrni?ul iute al sentimentelor du?m?noase.

Consequently, he is held to be one of the best husbands in France. Though not susceptible of lively interest, he never scolds, unless, to be sure, he is kept waiting. His friends have named him "dull weather," — aptly enough, for there is neither clear light nor total darkness about him.

Para los enamorados es un placer infinito encontrar en los accidentes de un paisaje, en la transparencia del aire y en los aromas de la tierra la poesía que anida en su alma. La naturaleza habla por ellos.

Woe to the man, as to the woman, who has left no desire unsatisfied! All is over then.

From that day my life has been nothing but happiness and prosperity. Nothing is more utterly uninteresting than a happy man, so let us say no more on that head, and return to the rest of the characters.

La avaricia empieza cuando se acaba la pobreza

Physical pain pales beside moral suffering, but arouses more pity since it can be seen.

A quotation in a speech, article, or book is like a rifle in the hands of an infantryman. It speaks with authority.

Un jeune homme se présenta pour être rédacteur de l'air timide et inquiet qu'avait Lucien naguère. Lucien vit avec un plaisir secret Giroudeau pratiquant sur le néophyte les plaisanteries par lesquelles le vieux militaire l'avait abusé ; son intérêt lui fit parfaitement comprendre la nécessité de ce manége, qui mettait des barrières presque infranchissables entre les débutants et la mansarde où pénétraient les élus.

Los filósofos han observado que las costumbres de la edad temprana retornan con fuerza en la vejez del hombre. Séchard confirmaba esta ley moral: cuanto más envejecía, más le gustaba beber.

the proofs being more or less like us according to a distribution of shading which is so nearly imperceptible that our reputation depends (barring the calumnies of friends and the witticisms of newspapers) on the balance struck by our criticisers between Truth that limps and Falsehood to which Parisian wit gives wings.

Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu'il a été proprement fait. The secret of a great fortune made without apparent cause is soon forgotten, if the crime is committed in a respectable way.

Whenever, in after times, I have gone through museums of old furniture in Paris, London, Munich, or Vienna, with the gray-headed custodian who shows you the splendors of time past, I have peopled the rooms with figures from the Collection of Antiquities.

Two hours later you might take the room for a battlefield after the fight. Broken glasses, serviettes crumpled and torn to rags lie strewn about among the nauseous-looking remnants of food on the dishes. There is an uproar that stuns you, jesting toasts, a fire of witticisms and bad jokes; faces are empurpled, eyes inflamed and expressionless, unintentional confidences tell you the whole truth.

an honest man is the man who keeps his own counsel, and will not divide the plunder.