Quotes from Honore de Balzac

Perhaps it is human nature to spare no torment when the victim accepts any suffering out of genuine humility, weakness or indifference.

El amor es un poema enteramente personal.

You haven't yet given me the right to obey you when you say: 'I want to.

It is difficult to keep illusions on any subject in Paris," answered Lucien as they turned in at his door. "There is a tax upon everything — everything has its price, and anything can be made to order — even success.

Pour un pauvre être écrasé par les différents despotismes qui, peu ou prou, pèsent sur toutes les jeunesses, le premier usage du libre arbitre, exercé même sur des riens, apportait à Tâme je ne sais quel épanouissement.

He felt in his heart a sort of remorse which bid him respect a creature that had done him no harm.

What do you do, gentlemen, when you place a man in solitude? You isolate him.

You have less pity than the executioner

Die Frauen reden Männern, die sie zu Schafen gemacht haben, immer ein, sie seien Löwen und hätten einen eisernen Charakter.

Spain, the country for castles in the air!" I

Your account is for sixteen hundred thousand francs!" — words said by Louis Mongenod to the woman whose life was spent in the depths of the cloisters of Notre-Dame. The thought, "She must be rich!" entirely changed his way of looking at the matter. "How old is she?" he began to ask himself; and a vision of a romance in the rue Chanoinesse came to him. "She certainly has an air of nobility! Can she be concerned in some bank?" thought he.

Godefroid, lost in reflection, stared into his fire. He was absorbed in meditation on this great misery which contained so many different miseries, and yet within which he could see the ineffable joys of the many triumphs of paternal and filial love; they were gems shining in the blackness of the pit.

If light is the first love of life, is not love the light of the heart?

I know very well that before an audience plain, honest truth may fail to be contagious or even welcome. But have you never remarked that, by using our opportunities wisely, we finally meet with days which may be called the festivals of morality and intelligence, days on which, naturally and almost without effort, the thought of good triumphs?

my brother, the Duc de Rhetore, never comes in, I am told, till it is time to dress for dinner. Miss Griffith (she is not unlike a griffin) and Philippe took me to my rooms.

Someday you will find out that there is far more happiness in another's happiness than in your own.

In the first place, my child, from what you have yourself told me, it is clear that the one unpardonable sin in society is to be happy.

Money brings everything to you; even your daughters.

The first thing necessary to win the heart of a woman is opportunity.

Pensons à lui, ma mère, répondit Eugénie, et n'en parlons pas. Vous souffrez; vous avant tout. Tout c'était lui.

Il est dans le caractère français de s'enthousiasmer, de se colérer, de se passionner pour le météore du moment, pour les bâtons flottants de l'actualité. Les êtres collectifs, les peuples, seraient-ils donc sans mémoire?

A naked woman is less dangerous than one who spreads her skirt skillfully to cover and exhibit everything at once.

We live in an age, madame, when nothing is sure," he said. "Even thrones rise and fall in France with fearful rapidity. Fifteen years have wreaked their will on a great empire, a monarchy, and a revolution. No one can now dare to count upon the future. You know my attachment to the cause of legitimacy. Suppose some catastrophe; would you not be glad to have a friend in the conquering party?" "Undoubtedly," she said, smiling.

What is a feeling if not a world in a thought?