Honor de Balzac Quotes

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

Honor de Balzac

Between the daylight gambler and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between a careless husband and the lover swooning under his ladys window.

Honor de Balzac

What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended?

Honor de Balzac

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.

Honor de Balzac

Girls are apt to imagine noble and enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their own minds; they have fanciful extravagant ideas about men, and sentiment, and life; and then they innocently endow somebody or other with all the perfections for their daydreams, and put their trust in him.

Honor de Balzac

Ideas consume the ages as passions consume men. When man is cured, humanity may possibly cure itself.

Honor de Balzac

It is certain that during the sixteenth century, and the years that preceded and followed it, poisoning was brought to a perfection unknown to modern chemistry, as history itself will prove. Italy, the cradle of modern science, was, at this period, the inventor and mistress of these secrets, many of which are now lost.

Honor de Balzac

Peter the Hermit, Calvin, and Robespierre, each at an interval of three hundred years and all three from the same region, were, politically speaking, the Archimedean screws of their age, at each epoch a Thought which found its fulcrum in the self-interest of mankind.

Honor de Balzac

Unfortunately her portrait will cure no one of the addiction to loving sweetly smiling angels with dreamy looks, innocent faces, and a strong-box for a heart.

Honor de Balzac

Nothing is so discreet as a young face, for nothing is less mobile; it has the serenity, the surface smoothness, and the freshness of a lake. There is no character in womens faces before the age of thirty.

Honor de Balzac

But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.

Honor de Balzac

Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without esteem they cannot exist; esteem is the first demand that they make of love.

Honor de Balzac

The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman emancipation means corruption.

Honor de Balzac

The passion, observe, which is able to reflect, gives even to ninnies, fools, and imbeciles a species of intelligence, especially in youth.

Honor de Balzac

To those who have exhausted statecraft, nothing remains but the realm of pure thought.

Honor de Balzac