"Old men are prone to invest the futures of young men with their own past sorrows."
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Honore de Balzac quotes (page 5 of 34)
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"Modesty is the conscience of the body."
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"A mother who is really a mother is never free."
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"Vice is perhaps a desire to learn everything."
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"Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from."
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"Envy lurks at the bottom of the human heart like a viper in its hole."
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"A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of man's vanity, the novice responds but to one."
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"Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty."
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"The prodigality of millionaires is comparable only to their greed of gain. Let some whim or passion seize them and money is of no account. In fact these Croesuses find whims and passions harder to come by than gold."
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"Does anyone know where these gondolas of Paris come from? [Fr., Ne sait on pas ou viennent ces gondoles Parisiennes?]"
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"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."
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"Temperament is the thermometer of character."
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"Art's greatest efforts are invariably a timid counterfeit of Nature."
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"The greater a man's talents, the more marked his idiosyncracies. Yet in the provinces originality is considered perilously close to lunacy."
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"It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment."
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"God is the author, men are only the players. These grand pieces which are played upon earth have been composed in heaven."
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"The secret of the nobility and beauty of great ladies lies in the art with which they can shed their veils. In such situations, they become like ancient statues. If they kept the merest scarf on, they would be lewd. Your bourgeois woman will always try to cover her nakedness."
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"As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move…similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle."
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"A man is a poor creature compared to a woman."
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"It is a singular fact that most men of action incline to the theory of fatalism, while the greater part of men of thought believe in providence."
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