Quotes from Honore de Balzac

Passion is born deaf and dumb.

Man can start with aversion and end with love, but if he begins with love and comes round to aversion he will never get back to love.

Life is simply what out feelings do to us.

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

Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.

Love is a game in which one always cheats.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer – Death has never forsaken any man

Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity.

I prefer thought to action, an idea to a transaction, contemplation to activity.

A murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his vileness pervades every moment of his life

Passion is univeral humanity. Without it religion history art and romance would be useless.

With monuments as with men, position means everything.

Misfortune is a stepping stone for genius, the baptismal font of Christians, treasure for the skillful man, an abyss for the feeble.

Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.

Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society.

All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.

If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.

Love is the most melodious of all harmonies and the sentiment of love is innate. Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it.

He will show you how, during the springtime of life, illusions, innocent hopes, silver threads of gossamer, descend from heaven and return there without ever touching the earth.

Daca inima omeneasca afla clipe de ragaz in timp ce urca pe culmile afectiunii, rareori se opreste pe povarnisul abrupt al sentimentelor dusmanoase

Prudenta lui ii egala averea. Era de o umilinta excesiva. Niciodata orgoliul nu-l prinsese in capcanele sale. Acest negustor se facea atat de mic, de bland, de placut si de sarac la curte, in fata printeselor, regilor si favoritilor, incat aceasa modestie si bonomie ii pazisera afacerea.

if reason and poesy persist in wrangling with the tools, the brushes, we shall be brought to doubt, like Frenhofer, who is as much excited in brain as he is exalted in art. A sublime painter, indeed; but he had the misfortune to be born rich, and that enables him to stray into theory and conjecture. Do not imitate him. Work! work! painters should theorize with their brushes in their hands.

When you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt.