836 Quotes by Honoré de Balzac

Women are always true, even in the midst of their greatest falsities, because they are always influenced by some natural feeling.

Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer – Death has never forsaken any man

However gross a man may be, the minute he expresses a strong and genuine affection, some inner secretion alters his features, animates his gestures, and colors his voice. The stupidest man will often, under the stress of passion, achieve heights of eloquence, in thought if not in language, and seem to move in some luminous sphere. Goriot's voice and gesture had at this moment the power of communication that characterizes the great actor. Are not our finer feelings the poems of the human will?

Lucien took the cigar and lit it, in the Spanish fashion, from that of the priest. "He is right," Lucien thought; "there is plenty of time to kill myself.

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

Il existe je ne sais quoi de grand et d’épouvantable dans le suicide. Les chutes d’une multitude de gens sont sans danger, comme celles des enfants qui tombent de trop bas pour se blesser; mais quand un grand homme se brise, il doit venir de bien haut, s’être élevé jusqu’aux cieux, avoir entrevu quelque paradis inaccessible. Implacables doivent être les ouragans qui le forcent à demander la paix de l’âme à la bouche d’un pistolet… Chaque suicide est un poème sublime de mélancolie.

Glory is the sunshine of the dead

Where some one else's welfare is concerned, a young girl becomes as ingenious as a thief. Guileless where she herself is in question, and full of foresight for me,--she is like a heavenly angel forgiving the strange incomprehensible sins of earth.

این نقطه اشتراک زن ها و فرشته هاست. رنج بشریت مال آن هاست.