Honore de Balzac Quotes

Love is a game in which one always cheats.

No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.

A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.

Economized love is never real love.

The errors of women spring, almost always, from their faith in the good, or their confidence in the true.

One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.

Nobody loves a woman because she is handsome or ugly, stupid or intelligent. We love because we love.

A man is a poor creature compared to a woman.

A mother who is really a mother is never free.

Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane.

It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.

Men die in despair, while spirits die in ecstasy.

Those who spend too fast never grow rich.

To our shame a woman is never so much attached to us as when we suffer.

Behind every great fortune there is a crime.

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

Modesty is the conscience of the body.

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

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

Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love.

Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.

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

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

Political liberty, the peace of a nation, and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a heavy tax in blood!

Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.