836 Quotes by Honoré de Balzac

Vulgar souls look hastily and superficially at the sea and accuse it of monotony; other more privileged beings could spend a lifetime admiring it and discovering new and changing phenomena that delight them. So it is with love.

Women, perhaps even require a little hypocrisy.

The best painters, as they progress in reputation and towards perfection, are found to dispense more and more with the technique of the art, for simpler methods. Simplicity never fails to charm.

The duration of passion is proportionate with the original resistance of the woman.

It is very difficult to pass from pleasure to work. Accordingly more poems have been swallowed up by sorrow than ever happiness caused to blaze forth in unparalleled radiance.

Life cannot go on without much forgetting.

At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist; there can only be promise of the coming woman.

Women see everything or nothing according to the inclination of their hearts. Love is their sole light.

At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back the esteem she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young girl can only make moan.