836 Quotes by Honoré de Balzac

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

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.

A girl fresh from a boarding school may perhaps be a virgin but no! she is never chaste.

When chaste people need body or mind to resort to action or thought, they find steel in their muscles or knowledge in their intelligence. Theirs the diabolic vigor or the black magic of will power.

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

Man judges of nature in relation to itself; the angelic spirit judges of it in relation to heaven. In short, to the spirits everything speaks.

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

Nature knows nothing but solid bodies; your science deals only with combinations of surfaces. And so nature constantly gives the lie to all your laws; can you name one to which no fact makes an exception?

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