836 Quotes by Honoré de Balzac

To say to a rich man: You are poor! is to tell the Archbishop of Granada that his sermons are worthless.

Conventions are often more cruel than the law.

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

In France everything is a matter for jest. People make quips about the scaffold, about Napoleon's defeat on the banks of The Beresina, and about the barricades of our revolutions. So, at the assizes of the Last Judgment, there will always be a Frenchmen to crack a joke.

Above all do not ask that justice be just: It is just, because it is justice. The idea of a just justice could have originated only in the brain of an anarchist.

No woman allows her lover to descend from his pedestal. Even a god is not forgiven the slightest pettiness.

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

Science is the language of the temporal world; love is that of the spiritual world. Man, indeed, describes more than he explains; while the angelic spirit sees and understands. Science saddens man; love enraptures the angel; science is still seeking; love has found.

There are two histories : official history, lying, and then secret history, where you find the real causes of events.