Quotes from Honore de Balzac

Finance, like time, devours its own children.

A man wastes his time going to hear some of our eloquent modern preachers; they may change his opinions, but never his conduct.

Life in clubs is no paltry sign of the times we live in. Here gentlemen gamble with others whom they would not dream of inviting to their homes.

In family life people almost always adjust themselves to misfortune. They make a bed of it and hope makes them accept that bed, however hard it is.

Virginity, like all monstrosities, possesses special riches and its own absorbing grandeur. Among the chaste, life forces are economized and thus gain in resistance and durability.

For certain people, misfortune is a beacon that lights up the dark and baser sides of social life.

One of the most detestable habits of Lilliputian minds is to find their own littleness in others.

Time is the only capital of those who just have their inteligence as fortune.

True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure.

Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane.

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

The more you judge, the less you love.

I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race.

Loyalty in time of need is possibly one of the noblest of victories a courtier can win over himself.

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.

Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.

Authentic love always assumes the mystery of modesty, even in its expression, because actions speak louder than words. Unlike a feigned love, it feels no need to set a conflagration.

Love is the reduction of the universe to the single being, and the expansion of a single being, even to God

We love because we love.

When women love, they forgive everything...

He who best knows the world will love it least.

Wisdom is that apprehension of heavenly things to which the spirit rises through love.

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

Love, according to our contemporary poets, is a privilege which two beings confer upon one another, whereby they may mutually cause one another much sorrow over absolutely nothing.