Honore De Balzac Quotes

Other women bow their heads and suffer in silence. They go on living, mortally wounded but resigned, weeping often but with no desire to strike back against the person who has injured them, praying for him and cherishing their memories until their last breath. That is love, true love, the love the angels know ...

Nay, do not cry, papa, she said, kissing him.

For a father it is hell to be without your children.

Journalism, look you, is the religion of modern society.

Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.

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

Like the moth whose feet are caught in the molten wax of a candle, Rouget rapidly used up his remaining energy.

Perhaps love is only gratitude for pleasure.

True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.

Men bow before the power of genius; they hate it, and try to slander it, because genius does not divide the spoil; but if genius persists, they bow before it.

Our greatest fears lie in anticipation.

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.

Yes, it is time I was dead; there is nothing left me to do but to die. I am no good in the world; I am no longer a father!

The duration of passion is proportionate with the original resistance of the woman.

The life of a man who deliberately runs through his fortune often becomes a business speculation; his friends, his pleasures, patrons, and acquaintances are his capital.

A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over.

Cruelty and fear shake hands together. An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.

Parent may hinder their children's marriage; but children cannot interfere with the insane acts of their parents in their second childhood.

At each sentence my hostess put her head forward, looking at me with an innkeeper's keen scrutiny, a happy compromise between the instinct of a police constable, the astuteness of a spy, and the cunning of a dealer.

If those who are the enemies of innocent amusements had the direction of the world, they would take away the spring, and youth, the former from the year, the latter from human life.

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.