Quotes from Honore de Balzac

Love is the only passion which suffers neither past nor future.

True love is mixed up with birdlike squabbles, in which the disputants wound each other to the quick; but a quarrel without animus is, on the contrary, apiece of flattery to the dupe's conceit.

A great love is a credit opened in favor of a power so consuming that the moment of bankruptcy must inevitably occur.

The passion of love is essentially selfish, while motherhood widens the circle of our feelings.

Love endows us with a sort of personal religion; we respect another live within ourselves.

The wounds of self-love turn incurable when the oxide of self-love gets into them.

Nothing can afford a woman greater pleasure than to hear tender words of love. The strictest, most devout woman will listen even if she must not answer.

No woman dares to refuse love without a motive, for nothing is more natural than to yield to love.

To feel, to love, to suffer, to devote herself, will always be the text of the life of woman.

The greatest tyranny is to love I where we are not loved again.

Love is a religion, and its rituals cost more than those of other religions. It goes by quickly and, like a street urchin, it likes to mark its passage by a trail of devastation.

You cannot pluck love out of your heart as you would pull a tooth.

Love is the only way on which even the dim-witted reaches certain heights.

Though your vulgarian does not readily admit that feelings can change overnight, certainly two lovers often part far more abruptly than they came together.

When she lives at his palace, the maiden niece of a bishop can pass for a respectable woman because, if she has a love affair, she is obliged to hoodwink her uncle.

A woman in love has full intelligence of her power; the more virtuous she is, the more effective her coquetry.

Self-love is as protective as the Deity; Disenchantment is as perspicacious as a surgeon; Experience is as provident as a mother. Such are the theologic virtues of marriage.

Marriage is a fight to the death. Before contracting it, the two parties concerned implore the benediction of Heaven because to promise to love each other forever is the rashest of enterprises.

A husband who submits to his wife's yoke is justly held an object of ridicule. A woman's influence ought to be entirely concealed.

Thought is a key to all treasures; the miser's gains are ours without his cares. Thus I have soared above this world, where my enjoyment have been intellectual joys.

for a woman knows the face of the man she loves like a sailor knows the open sea

The country is provincial; it becomes ridiculous when it tries to ape Paris.

All genuinely noble women prefer truth to falsehood. As the Russians with their Czar, they are unwilling to see their idol degraded; they want to be proud of the domination they accept.

Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.