"While seeking out the dead, I see nothing but the living."
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Quote collection
Honore de Balzac quotes (page 27 of 34)
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"Evasion is unworthy of us, and is always the intimate of equivocation."
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"The weakest being on earth can accomplish feats of strength. The frailest urchin will ring every doorbell on the street in arctic weather or hoist himself aloft to inscribe his name on a virgin monument."
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"Women themselves are so happy, and so beautiful, when they're strong, that they naturally choose powerful men, even if that power's so enermous there's a real risk it could shatter them."
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"Stupidity assumes two forms, it speaks or is silent. Mute stupidity is bearable."
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"It's catastrophies which turn wise and strong people into philosophers."
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"White hair often covers the head, but the heart that holds it is ever young."
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"The future of a nation lies in the hands of mothers."
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"My further advice on your relations to women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, "Serve all, love one.""
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"How fondly swindlers coddle their dupes! No mother is as caressing or thoughtful towards her adored child as a merchant in hypocrisy toward his milch-cow."
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"Thought is the only treasure that God sets outside all power and keeps to serve as a secret link among the unhappy."
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"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."
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"Society proceeds like the ocean. After a disaster, it resume its wonted level and rhythms; its devouring interests efface all traces of damage."
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"The fashions we call English in Paris are French in London, and vice versa. Franco-British hostility vanishes when it comes to questions of words and clothing. God save the King is a tune composed by Lully for a chorus in a play by Racine."
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"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."
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"It is not hope but despair that gives us the measure of our ambitions. We may yield secretly to beautiful poems of hope but grief looms start and stripped of all veils."
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"Good befalls us while we sleep, sometimes."
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"Most women wish to feel that their spirit has been violated. Do they not, indeed, flatter themselves on never yielding save to force?"
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"Conventions are often more cruel than the law."
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"How did you get back?' asked Vautrin. 'I walked,' replied Eugene. 'I wouldn't like half-pleasures, myself,' observed the tempter. 'I'd want to go there in my own carriage, have my own box, and come back in comfort. All or nothing, that's my motto.' 'And a very good one,' said Madame Vauquer."
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