Honore De Balzac Quotes

Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.

A mother's life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears.

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.

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

It is as absurd to say that a man can't love one woman all the time as it is to say that a violinist needs several violins to play the same piece of music.

A lover always thinks of his mistress first and himself second; with a husband it runs the other way.

The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.

Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.

Nobody loves a woman because she is handsome or ugly, stupid or intelligent. We love because we love.

Love is the poetry of the senses.

A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.

Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.

The fact is that love is of two kinds, one which commands, and one which obeys. The two are quite distinct, and the passion to which the one gives rise is not the passion of the other.

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.

Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.

Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity.

There is no such thing as a great talent without great will power.

When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues.

A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.

It is easy to sit up and take notice, What is difficult is getting up and taking action.

No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.

The more one judges, the less one loves.

A mother who is really a mother is never free.

A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.