836 Quotes by Honoré de Balzac

One exits with one’s husband – one lives with one’s lover.

A husband who submits to his wife’s yoke is justly held an object of ridicule. A woman’s influence ought to be entirely concealed.

Art’s greatest efforts are invariably a timid counterfeit of Nature.

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.

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

A woman questions the man who loves exactly as a judge questions a criminal. This being so, a flash of the eye, a mere word, an inflection of the voice or a moment’s hesitation suffice to expose the fact, betrayal or crime he is attempting to conceal.

To have one’s mother-in-law in the country when one lives in Paris, and vice versa, is one of those strokes of luck that one encounters only too rarely.

A wife is property that one acquires by contract, she is transferable, because possession of her requires title; in fact, woman is, so to speak, only man’s appendage; consequently, slice, cut, clip her, you have all rights to her.