Top 500 Honoré de Balzac Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “Love may be the fairest gem which Society has filched from Nature; but what is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood? A smile has dried my tears.”

— Honoré de Balzac

302. “Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society?”

— Honoré de Balzac

303. “Stupidity assumes two forms, it speaks or is silent. Mute stupidity is bearable.”

— Honoré de Balzac

304. “Unintelligent persons are like weeds that thrive in good ground; they love to be amused in proportion to the degree in which they weary themselves.”

— Honoré de Balzac

305. “I can no longer think of anything but you. In spite of myself, my imagination carries me to you. I grasp you, I kiss you, I caress you, a thousand of the most amorous caresses take possession of me.”

— Honoré de Balzac

306. “When attempted self-destruction does not cure a man of life, it cures him of voluntary death.”

— Honoré de Balzac

307. “In a husband there is only a man; in a married woman there is a man, a father, and mother, and a woman.”

— Honoré de Balzac

308. “Any man, however blase or depraved, finds his love kindled anew when he sees himself threatened by a rival.”

— Honoré de Balzac

309. “Though your vulgarian does not readily admit that feelings can change overnight, certainly two lovers often part far more abruptly than they came together.”

— Honoré de Balzac

310. “Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.”

— Honoré de Balzac

311. “Where poverty ceases, avarice begins.”

— Honoré de Balzac

312. “I declare, on my soul and conscience, that the attainment of power, or of a great name in literature, seemed to me an easier victory than a success with some young, witty, and gracious lady of high degree.”

— Honoré de Balzac

313. “Most women wish to feel that their spirit has been violated. Do they not, indeed, flatter themselves on never yielding save to force?”

— Honoré de Balzac

314. “Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love.”

— Honoré de Balzac

315. “The more illegal a profit, the more tenaciously a man clings to it.”

— Honoré de Balzac

316. “At fifteen, neither beauty nor talent exist: a woman is all promise.”

— Honoré de Balzac

317. “Reproach is usually honest, which is more than can be said of praise.”

— Honoré de Balzac

318. “Le mariage doit incessamment combattre un monstre qui de v ore tout: l’habitude. Marriage should always combat the monster that devours everything: habit.”

— Honoré de Balzac

319. “There is a cure for temptation. What? Yielding to it.”

— Honoré de Balzac

320. “Nothing is irredeemably ugly but sin.”

— Honoré de Balzac

321. “A murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his vileness pervades every moment of his life.”

— Honoré de Balzac

322. “All poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things.”

— Honoré de Balzac

323. “The man as he converses is the lover; silent, he is the husband.”

— Honoré de Balzac

324. “Bankers are lynxes. To expect any gratitude from them is equivalent to attempting to move the wolves of the Ukraine to pity in the middle of winter.”

— Honoré de Balzac

325. “It is as easy to dream a book as it is hard to write one.”

— Honoré de Balzac

326. “Like most young people, these two attributed to the world their own intelligence and virtues. Youth who knows no failure has no mercy on the faults of other people; but it has also a sublime faith in them.”

— Honoré de Balzac

327. “My writing table has seen all my wretchedness, knows all my plans, has overheard all my thoughts.”

— Honoré de Balzac

328. “God is the poet; men are but the actors. The great dramas of earth were written in heaven.”

— Honoré de Balzac

329. “A lover teaches a wife all her husband has kept from her.”

— Honoré de Balzac

330. “Show me the woman, however loyal, who does not seek to rouse desire.”

— Honoré de Balzac

331. “Handsome widows, after a twelve-month, enjoy a latitude and longitude without limit.”

— Honoré de Balzac

332. “Love or hatred must constantly increase between two persons who are always together; every moment fresh reasons are found for loving or hating better.”

— Honoré de Balzac

333. “The winter’s frost must rend the burr of the nut before the fruit is seen. So adversity tempers the human heart, to discover its real worth.”

— Honoré de Balzac

334. “Men are so made that they can resist sound argument, and yet yield to a glance.”

— Honoré de Balzac

335. “As a rule, only the poor are generous.”

— Honoré de Balzac

336. “Our souls possess the unknown power of extending as well as contracting space.”

— Honoré de Balzac

337. “Clouds symbolize the veils that shroud God.”

— Honoré de Balzac

338. “Love based upon money and vanity forms the most stubborn of passions.”

— Honoré de Balzac

339. “A rent in your clothes is a mishap, a stain on them is a vice.”

— Honoré de Balzac

340. “In love, what a woman mistakes for disgust is actually clearsightedness. If she does not admire a man, she scorns him.”

— Honoré de Balzac

341. “Self-interest is an ineffable feeling which shall follow us into God’s very presence since they say there is a hierarchy even among the Holy Saints.”

— Honoré de Balzac

342. “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.”

— Honoré de Balzac

343. “Women? In order to realize how far these charming creatures we idealize can carry their cruelty, we must see them among themselves!”

— Honoré de Balzac

344. “Priests, magistrates and ladies never quite take off their gowns.”

— Honoré de Balzac

345. “Doubt follows white-winged hope with trembling steps.”

— Honoré de Balzac

346. “A society of atheists would immediately invent a religion.”

— Honoré de Balzac

347. “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.”

— Honoré de Balzac

348. “Old maids claw as cats do. They not only inflict wounds but experience pleasure in doing so. Nor will they fail to remind their victims of the blood drawn.”

— Honoré de Balzac

349. “Despotism accomplishes great things illegally; liberty doesn’t even go to the trouble of accomplishing small things legally.”

— Honoré de Balzac

350. “Heaven should be kind to stupid people, for no one else can be consistently.”

— Honoré de Balzac