"When one has no particular talent for anything, one takes to the pen."
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Quote collection
Honore de Balzac quotes (page 29 of 34)
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"Woman is stronger by virtue of her feelings than man by virtue of his power."
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"When a woman starts talking about her duty, her regard for appearances, and her respect for religion, she raises so many bulwarks which she delights to see captured by storm."
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"Nature endows woman alternately with a particular strength which helps her to suffer and a weakness which counsels her to be resigned."
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"Creole women take after Europe in their intelligence, after the Tropics in the illogical violence of their passions, and after the Indies in the apathetic indolence with which they commit or suffer good and evil."
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"A Creole woman is like a child, she wants to possess everything immediately; like a child, she would set fire to a house in order to fry an egg. In her languor, she thinks of nothing; when passionately aroused, she thinks of any act possible or impossible."
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"Among fifty percent of your married couples, the husband worries very little about what his wife is doing, provided she is doing all he wishes."
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"The Parisan, sauntering the streets idly, is as often a man in despair as a lounger."
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"But does not happiness come from the soul within?"
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"Pure herring oil is the port wine of English cats"
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"The Police and the Society of Jesus posses in common the virtue of never forsaking their enemies as friends."
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"In the silence of their studios, busied for days at a time with works which leave the mind relatively free, painters become like women; their thoughts can revolve around the minor facts of life and penetrate their hidden meaning."
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"It is very difficult to pass from pleasure to work. Accordingly more poems have been swallowed up by sorrow than ever happiness caused to blaze forth in unparalleled radiance."
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"In the medical profession a horse and carriage are more necessary than any scientific knowledge."
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"A knowledge of mankind and of things that surround us gives us that second education which proves far move valuable than our first because it alone turns out a truly accomplished man."
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"The happier a man, the more apt he is to tremble. In hearts exclusively tender, anxiety and jealousy are in exact proportion to happiness."
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"There are houses in certain provincial towns whose aspect inspires melancholy, akin to that called forth by sombre cloisters, dreary moorlands, or the desolation of ruins. Within these houses there is, perhaps, the silence of the cloister, the barrenness of moors, the skeleton of ruins; life and movement are so stagnant there that a stranger might think them uninhabited, were it not that he encounters suddenly the pale, cold glance of a motionless person, whose half-monastic face peers beyond the window-casing at the sound of an unaccustomed step."
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"Charity is not one of the virtues practiced on the stock market. The heart of a bank is but one of many viscera."
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"One day, about the middle of July 1838, one of the carriages, lately introduced to Paris cabstands, and known as Milords, was driving down the Rue de l'Universite, conveying a stout man of middle height in the uniform of a captain of the National Guard."
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"Poets and men of action differ: the former yield to their feelings in order to reproduce them in lively colors, and therefore judge only ex post facto; the latter feel and judge at one and the same time."
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