Top 500 Honoré de Balzac Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “In the first woman we love, we love everything. Growing older, we love the woman only.”

— Honoré de Balzac

102. “To feel, to love, to suffer, to devote herself, will always be the text of the life of woman.”

— Honoré de Balzac

103. “Remorse is impotence, impotence which sins again. Repentance alone is powerful; it ends all.”

— Honoré de Balzac

104. “Materialism and spirituality are two pretty racquets with which charlatans in cap and gown make the same ball fly.”

— Honoré de Balzac

105. “Love passes quickly, and passes like a street Arab, anxious to mark his way with mischief.”

— Honoré de Balzac

106. “With monuments as with men, position means everything.”

— Honoré de Balzac

107. “Ah! What pleasure it must be to a woman to suffer for the one she loves!”

— Honoré de Balzac

108. “And he, like many jaded people, had few pleasures left in life save good food and drink.”

— Honoré de Balzac

109. “We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.”

— Honoré de Balzac

110. “The woman you buy takes a great deal of money. The woman who gives herself to you takes all your money.”

— Honoré de Balzac

111. “The most real of all splendors are not in outward things, they are within us.”

— Honoré de Balzac

112. “Do you know what is the hardest thing in life? To make a choice.”

— Honoré de Balzac

113. “Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society.”

— Honoré de Balzac

114. “When in Turkey, do as the turkeys do.”

— Honoré de Balzac

115. “If we study Nature attentively in its great evolutions as in its minutest works, we cannot fail to recognize the possibility of enchantment – giving to that word its exact significance.”

— Honoré de Balzac

116. “One of the most detestable habits of Lilliputian minds is to find their own littleness in others.”

— Honoré de Balzac

117. “No woman dares to refuse love without a motive, for nothing is more natural than to yield to love.”

— Honoré de Balzac

118. “Marriage is an institution necessary to the maintenance of society but contrary to the laws of nature.”

— Honoré de Balzac

119. “Those who spend too fast never grow rich.”

— Honoré de Balzac

120. “Conventions are often more cruel than the law.”

— Honoré de Balzac

121. “The press is like a woman: sublime when it lies, it will not let go until it has forced you to believe it. The public, like a foolish husband, always succumbs.”

— Honoré de Balzac

122. “Marriage is a fight to the death. Before contracting it, the two parties concerned implore the benediction of Heaven because to promise to love each other forever is the rashest of enterprises.”

— Honoré de Balzac

123. “People who are in love suspect nothing or everything.”

— Honoré de Balzac

124. “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.”

— Honoré de Balzac

125. “It is no sin to be tempted; the wickedness lies in being overcome.”

— Honoré de Balzac

126. “I am a galley slave to pen and ink.”

— Honoré de Balzac

127. “I’m a great poet. I don’t put my poems on paper: they consist of actions and feelings.”

— Honoré de Balzac

128. “Imaginative, sanguine men will never recognize that in negotiations the most dangerous moment of all is when everything is moving according to their wishes.”

— Honoré de Balzac

129. “Clothes are like a gloss that sets off everything; dresser were invented more to enhance physical advantages than to veil physical defects.”

— Honoré de Balzac

130. “The fame of surgeons resembles the fame of actors, who live only during their lifetime and whose talent is no longer appreciable once they have disappeared.”

— Honoré de Balzac

131. “Misfortune is a stepping stone for genius, the baptismal font of Christians, treasure for the skillful man, an abyss for the feeble.”

— Honoré de Balzac

132. “Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.”

— Honoré de Balzac

133. “Envy lurks at the bottom of the human heart like a viper in its hole.”

— Honoré de Balzac

134. “The errors of women spring, almost always, from their faith in the good, or their confidence in the true.”

— Honoré de Balzac

135. “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.”

— Honoré de Balzac

136. “Memories beautify life, but the capacity to forget makes it bearable.”

— Honoré de Balzac

137. “The boor covers himself, the rich man or the fool adorns himself, and the elegant man gets dressed.”

— Honoré de Balzac

138. “Such is life. It is no cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands; the real art is in getting them clean again, and therein lies the whole morality of our epoch.”

— Honoré de Balzac

139. “All human power is a compound of time and patience.”

— Honoré de Balzac

140. “Every moment of happiness requires a great amount of Ignorance.”

— Honoré de Balzac

141. “A jealous husband doesnt doubt his wife, but himself.”

— Honoré de Balzac

142. “By resorting to self-resignation, the unfortunate consummate.”

— Honoré de Balzac

143. “Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?”

— Honoré de Balzac

144. “Man is neither good nor bad; he is born with instincts and abilities.”

— Honoré de Balzac

145. “In a world of hunchbacks, a fine figure becomes a monstrosity.”

— Honoré de Balzac

146. “What makes friendship indissolute and what doubles its charms is a feeling we find lacking in love: I mean certitude.”

— Honoré de Balzac

147. “Man is no match for woman where mischief reigns.”

— Honoré de Balzac

148. “Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.”

— Honoré de Balzac

149. “I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race.”

— Honoré de Balzac

150. “If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.”

— Honoré de Balzac